The Moth Radio Hour: Confidence - Too Much, Too Little?
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This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX, and I'm Katherine Burns. Today, we're going to hear stories about being self-assured or not, being over or underconfident. For some people, it's just about knowing who you are and who you aren't. That was the case with our first storyteller, Aliza Kasny. We first met Aliza when she participated in our high school Story Slam program, which leads after-school workshops for students around New York City.

We liked her story so much, we asked her to develop it for our New York main stage. She was the youngest person in the show by at least 10 years. All the older storytellers were beside themselves with nerves, but everyone noticed that 19-year-old Aliza seemed completely relaxed. She was by far the most confident of them all. Here's Aliza Kasmi, live at the Moth. So, I was six years old in the first grade, and I was sitting at a table with my three best friends.

And we were all really similar. All of our moms bought us clothes from the children's place, and we all liked to play house during recess, and all of our names started with the letter A. There was Ashaya, Amanda, Alicia, and Aliza.

And we were working on the icebreaker project of the first grade, which our teacher, Ms. Harrington, had assigned to us, and it was going to be self-portraits, so that we could hang them up on the wall and get to know each other's faces and names. And I was really excited for this project, and I knew it was really special because there were three drafts, and we were working on the final draft, which was going to be colored in. And I was super stoked for this because over the summer, my mom had bought me this coloring book

that taught me all these really great techniques for how to draw properly, and I finally mastered coloring inside of the lines. And I was so excited to show my friends my new skills. I was basically young Picasso.

And I also knew this was a special project because we were using oil pastels. And I loved oil pastels because they're really soft, so I would pinch off a little bit and melt it between my fingers. And they were expensive for my public school in New York City, and so each table got one box, and each box got...

Each box had one of each color, so you had to be patient and wait for your color to not be used. And at this point, I had colored in my shirt blue and the background green, and there was a little tree, and I had drawn in all the features of my face, which the book had taught me to do first, and I'd drawn my lips and my nose, and I was ready to color in my face.

And all of my friends had used the peach oil pastel to color in their face, and since we were basically all the same girl, I figured I would use peach too. And so finally, when it was available, I picked it up and I started drawing so slowly, going around my lips and my eyes, and was coloring in all one direction. And I was watching as the oil pastel melts into the paper and my face come alive, and I colored inside of the lines.

and when I looked down, it was like I was looking into a mirror. This girl I had just drawn was exactly how I see myself. And I feel my teacher, Ms. Harrington, over my shoulder, and Ms. Harrington loved it when people drew well. And so I was getting ready for her to praise me, to say, "Eliza, that is the most beautiful self-portrait I have ever seen. I'm going to hang it above my desk so everyone who comes in can see it." And instead, Ms. Jill Harrington says, "Eliza, that's not your color."

And I'm confused by this because I don't understand how colors can belong to people, but before I can find a way to ask her, she's gone to the oil pastel box and has started looking through it, and she doesn't find the color that she's looking for, and so she goes to the crayon bin.

Now every school had this infamous crayon bin that had bits and pieces of wrapped up and gross crayons that had been rolling around in that bin forever and I never went to the crayon bin but nonetheless Ms. Harrington is rummaging through it and she reaches in and she pulls out this little nub of a brown crayon that's unwrapped and gross and she hands it to me.

And I'm still really confused by all of this, but I've noticed my friends are staring at me and my heart is beating really fast and I want this to be over. And so I just grab the crayon and I start coloring in my face and I'm going in all different directions except for the fact that wax crayon and oil pastel don't mix together. They don't belong on the same paper, so it doesn't matter how hard I'm pushing because I can't get the crayon to stick and I'm coloring outside of the lines

and when I look down at this paper, I'm this grotesque monster that can't decide if she wants to be peach or brown, and I want to beg Ms. Harrington, please don't hang this up. I'll do it all over again. I'll use the colors that you want me to, but before I can find the right words, she's taken my self-portrait and put it into a pile with all of my even-toned peach friends, and it gets hung up.

And that night I go home and I ask my mom why I wasn't allowed to be peach. And she explains it as best as you can to a six-year-old who's just gone through an identity crisis. And she says, "I'm not peach and your dad isn't peach and since you're our daughter, you're not peach either." But this confused me even more because my parents are just like my peach friend's parents. They sound the same, they make the same small talk,

but they're not the same, and everyone seems to understand this concept of color, and I'm not getting it, and I don't want my mom to think that I'm stupid, and so I don't ask her any further, and I try to not think about it. But I didn't know where I fit, and I was stuck in this color limbo, but I finally graduated elementary school and moved on to sixth grade and thought I had left this whole concept of colors behind me.

And so, on the first day of sixth grade, I was really excited. It was a brand new start, and we were all trying to get to know each other by asking questions like, "Where did you go to elementary school?" and "What's your favorite book?" And this one kid comes up to me and he says, "What race are you?" And I had never been blatantly asked this question before, and so I didn't have a prepared answer. And so, I thought back to Ms. Harrington and that brown crayon. So I told him I'm brown.

And he gets this confused look on his face and he says, "What do you mean you're brown? Brown isn't a race." And I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that I had finally said, "I'm brown," and it still wasn't enough. And then this little six-year-old girl deep inside of me gets really angry, and then I get really angry, and then I'm screaming at him, and I said, "You know what? If I say I'm brown, then that's it. I'm brown." And he never spoke to me again.

Which was fine, because I had finally found the words to stand up for myself. And I'd finally come to terms with who I was. Now, I want to say that was the end of it, that because I was okay with who I was, that I never had to stand up or defend my race again, but that just wasn't true. I was growing up in post-9-11 New York City, where being brown put me in this category of others, and I had been questioned about who I was many times after that, and I had to...

reaffirm over and over that I'm brown, I'm brown, I'm brown because I've worked so hard to love the skin that I'm in and nothing anyone can say will take that away from me. And today if you ask me to draw a self-portrait of myself,

I would draw a confident young woman who's proud of her Afghan and Pakistani heritage, who is a proud American, and I would find the most beautiful, soft, oil pastel to color in my face. No one would have to tell me to pick it up, and it would be my first choice. Thank you. Aliza Kazmi's work has been featured in Teen Vogue and The Moth's New York Times best-selling story collection, Occasional Magic.

Aliza graduated from Stony Brook University in 2019 with a degree in journalism. Our next storyteller, Dante Jackson, is also someone we met in our high school program. Catherine McCarthy is the former manager of that program. And I asked her about Dante. She said, "It was our very first story slam there. A packed black box theater in the basement of the school."

Dante had never spoken in public before and was really nervous, but you can hear how he gained confidence as he told the story and fed off the energy of the audience. Here's Dante, live at the School for Classics in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn. Okay, well, back in middle school, I wasn't really the type of kid to let myself have any fun. I was...

I was afraid that if I let myself have fun, I'd end up being judged. And I don't like being judged. So eighth grade comes around. Prom is coming up. Everybody's talking about it. Hey, you going to prom? I'm going to prom. You know what you're wearing? You know who you're going with? Oh, I know what I'm going with. But me, I wasn't planning on it. I didn't really want to go. I thought I'd just skip it. I thought I'd just end up being a kid in the corner, chicken in hand.

Just standing there. So after being constantly bugged by friends and family, I decided, you know what? What the heck? Might as well go. Let's just hear what it's going to be about. So graduation and prom was on the same day. Graduation was early on in the day. We sang Celine Dion. I hated it. So I go home. I get dressed. I throw on my suit, have my little fedora on, you know, stunting.

So I'm going to my friend Shannon's house. It's a block away from my house, not far. She lives next to this daycare I used to go to. There's a family of Trinidadians. I've known them since birth. They're like my second family. We're all outside, chilling. My mom's taking a bajillion pictures. You know how to get around this kind of time. And yeah, so typically, well, I should say first that Shannon...

Shannon comes outside and typically she's a tomboy. She's usually just here in her shirt, jeans, sneakers. That's it. When she comes out, she got her hair down. She got her little white dress on. She got the real huge hoop earrings, you know. So now I'm standing here. I'm like, huh, well now. So we get in the truck. It's about a 15, 20 minute drive. Not very long.

I get there, all my friends stand outside, "Hey, Dante, hey." He decided to show up. I'm like, "Hey." So I go inside. The space is a little bit smaller than I thought it would be. Granted, it's not a lot of us, but it was pretty fancy looking. I thought it was a good place to be. Music starts playing. Everybody's on the dance floor. I'm in the corner, standing there, chicken in hand.

I had a few people come up to me and try to pull me on the dance floor, but I wasn't moving. I was not moving. I wasn't moving for anything but chicken. So the DJ decides to put on this song, and now he's saying, you know, everybody that's not dancing, you got to grab them, grab them, pull them on that dance floor. You see anybody standing on the wall, you got to grab them, bring them on the floor. So immediately, 20 heads come at me and try to drag me on the dance floor. And at this point, I'm just done fighting it. I'm like, you know what?

What the heck? I'm just gonna go on that dance floor. I'm gonna have a good time. I'm standing awkwardly in the middle of the dance floor just looking around. So I try not to make myself look suspicious so I start doing a little... I start doing a little two-step. This is where it was at. So...

Gradually over time I start getting more into it. The little two step turns into a little, turns a little to a shuffle. That shuffle turns into a crisscross and that crisscross turns into a God knows what. I don't even know what I was doing anymore. I just know that I'm on fire and I'm busting moves I never thought was possible for me.

And I wasn't aware of this until I took the time to look around and I'm stuck in that little circle they make. Everybody's like, "Hey, go Dante, go Dante, hey." So, and it turns out that was one of the best nights of my life. It is like my life up until that point. I was locked in a dark room, but then I decided to unlock the door and I took a step out and I learned how to dance.

Dante Jackson is now a 25-year-old aspiring writer and plans to go to school to work in the automotive industry. To see a video of Dante busting a move while telling this story, go to themoth.org. Both Dante and our first storyteller, Aliza, have stayed involved with The Moth long after they graduated high school. They've each told their stories to hundreds of middle and high schoolers around New York City, hopefully inspiring confidence in a whole new generation of storytellers.

Coming up, a man's underconfidence gets him in trouble during a visit to the Russian spa. And later, a young Sam Shepard's overconfidence creates havoc on a film set when The Moth Radio Hour continues. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by PRX. This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX.

I'm Katherine Burns. In this show, we're hearing about confidence. And our next story is about what can happen when you're underconfident. Our storyteller is David Crabb, and he told the story while hosting The Moth's debut show at the Sydney Opera House. We were there launching The Moth in Australia, and one of our other storytellers dropped out last minute. We were literally on the other side of the world where we knew almost no one, so we panicked. We said, David, you're already hosting. Is there any chance you have a story you could tell? And he did.

Here's David at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney.

So I'm going to tell you a little story, as we get warmed up for two more storytellers. And when I think of the razor's edge, another thing that it makes me think of is just in general just tension. How many of you guys like massages? I got ruined on massages. It was my partner and I's two-year anniversary, and he said, why don't we go get massages and we'll just spend the day in the spa. So we went to the Russian Bass in the East Village of New York,

where everyone knows it's a spa on a budget, it's fine. And we walked in and the thing that greets you when you walk into the Russian bath is a very angry old Russian woman. She looks like she's made of pudding and moles. She greets you behind a sort of steam-filled deli counter, just violently shoving carrots into a juicer. Just like, "Welcome to relaxation!"

She's just like, oh, God, get me out of here. So we ran past her and down the stairs, and we signed in, and we went. We changed into our shorts, and we weren't downstairs for five minutes before we were approached by this giant Russian man with these tired gray eyes, eyes that have seen things. Um...

He came up to us in this big oversized white robe and he had a clipboard and he's like, "You two want special service?" And we were like, "Yes, we do!" It was terrifying. We just agreed. And he started rambling off all these special services, but in Russian, confusing. And finally we were like, "Massage, we just want massage." And he was like, "Massage, I will come get you." And he said it like a threat with a pen, you know? "You're gonna get rubbed," you know?

So we go about enjoying the spa and we go to this one steam room. And in New York, I feel like everyone has made a contract with each other to act like things in New York are normal when they are not. I remember my partner and I once ate a different anniversary meal as clearly somewhere near us a rat was screaming in a glue trap. And we were just like, it's just a rusty hinge on something. I love you.

And when we're in this like spa room, you go in and you expect some sort of duct system with steam coming through. But when you go in, it's just this concrete room. It looks like a place you would wake up in one of those Saw movies. And there is a crack in the concrete. It looks like Armageddon in like a parking garage wall. And loose steam is just like hissing out of it. You don't know where it's from. Is it sewage steam? Who can say? But ah, ah, fabulous.

We're in this room with these two other girls when the big Russian man comes in and he has a big plastic bucket. You know one of those buckets that's so big it has like a drawing of a baby in it? They're like, beware of your child around this bucket. It's a huge ass bucket. And it's full of what looks like shards of glass. And he has a giant sort of dead feather from some kind of animal. And he comes in and he's like, Jennifer! And very sheepishly, a woman curled up in the corner with her friend is like, meee!

Jennifer is directed to stand against the wall like Guantanamo Bay. Like she literally, like... And this giant Russian man proceeds to dip this weird dead feather in what is like rock salt and lash her. Lash her! Lash her because it's Russian and it feels good. And I'll always remember at one point it's happening and she turns and she looks at her friend and she's like, Stacy!

So a little bit later, the giant man, he comes to us, and he's like, Jack and David. And we're like, okay. So we follow him, and we follow him up these stairs, and we get to this long hallway. And it's a hallway that doesn't have real walls to make the rooms. It has those little sort of shades that, you know, women change behind in old movies. It folds out. So you can hear the stereos playing in all the massage rooms at the same time. And it's this eerie, cacophonous, like there's throat singing and whale songs and a harp. It's like...

It's the most awful sound ever. And as we're walking down the hallway, it almost seems to get longer. I feel like, have you guys seen Poltergeist? When the mom runs down the hallway, "Caroline!" And it just gets so long. I felt like that because I was so nervous about what was coming. We finally get to the end of the hallway and the big Russian man, he looks at my partner and he's like, "Jack, you come with me. David, you go with Ivan." And I turn around and there is Ivan.

Ivan is a little bit taller than me. He is covered in muscles that I didn't know men could have. He is in a way too short white robe, undone way too low, with like a medallion resting in like the perfect amount of chest hair, giant pecs. And he's like, David, my name is Ivan. Come with me. And I'm like, bye, Jack. Happy anniversary. Bye-bye. Bye. Jack loves when I tell this story.

So I go in this room with Ivan and it's very dim, there's candles lit and there's the big sort of padded massage table with the doughnut and he tells me to get on my stomach and I put my face through the doughnut and then he says, "I just have one question for you, David. As far as your massage, do you want soft or do you want hard?" And I'm like, "Soft! Just give me the soft one, please! I don't need just soft. Swedish, Swedish, Swedish!"

And then the lights get even dimmer on the floor that I'm looking through, I'm looking at the floor through the hole and then I hear a click and in the corner of the room begins "I gave you all the love I tried, I gave you, this is no ordinary love." And Ivan begins to touch me.

And he's like, and he's pushing and it's nice, but it does feel a little hard, you know? It feels more like a sport massage and less like a Swedish massage, but I'm like, I'm like dealing with it. And after about five minutes, just when I get used to it, the song fades down. And then the next Sade song, I guess it was the greatest hits. Smooth operas. Costa, Costa, late to Chicago. By the way, Sade doesn't really understand geography.

I mean, there's a lot more past Chicago. That's all I'm saying. Like, visit America. We'll help you, Sade. I only hear about 30 seconds of this song because then all of a sudden there's no hands on me. And then I hear it click, click. This is no. I'm like, okay, he likes that song. He wants to hear that one again. No problem. He doesn't like Smooth Operator for some reason, but he loves An Ordinary Love.

Rubbing, pressing, a little hard but it feels good. Song fades down. ♪ Smooth up ♪ Click, click, hands back on me. Alright, surely we can't hear this song more than a third time. The song fades. ♪ Smooth up ♪ Hands off, click, click. ♪ I'm trying to get ♪

And it goes on like this to the point that like I know exactly five more minutes of my massage. Like I can't even get lost in the time, you know what I mean? Because I'm like no ordinary love is telling me I'm 25 minutes into my hour-long massage. And if I do the math correctly, I'm hearing this song seven more times. Over and over again. This is no smooth upper click. This is no coast to coast to click. Just endless over and over again.

And then finally when I'm on like the 10th or 11th play, the massage is sort of building in intensity and all of a sudden I feel this force on my body that I've never felt and I hear my spine go click, click, click. And I'm like, I didn't know my body could do those things. And I take my face out of the little donut and I look up and Ivan in this soft massage is walking on my body with his hands on the ceiling and our eyes meet and he's like, don't look at me. And I'm like, oh God, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry, Ivan.

And I'm like, my God, if this is the Swedish, what is the sport? You just get punched in the face repeatedly, then beaten with a hot mallet. Like, what happens in that one? And is it also to Sade? I...

Finally, the massage ends and the lights come up and I get up and I feel just like a busted noodle. I feel insane. And when I look around the room, it's like 200 frame photos and it's mostly Ivan with the actress Tyne Daly. Do you know who that is? Cagney and Lacey? And it's her through every era of her career, like 25 years of Tyne Daly.

And the weird thing is, in a very sort of Dorian Gray way, Ivan looks the same age in all of them. Very bizarre. And he just very proudly, as I'm like trying to make my body work again, gestures, he says, "Than daily, number one clients."

And I'm like, "Bye, bye, I'm going." I run from the room, I come up, I see my partner Jack above me, like hobbling, and he looks at me with an urgency that's like, "Let's get out of here. Things are gonna get worse if we don't leave." And we just rush from there, and we rush by the woman. "Thank you for coming!" Like, "No, thank you." That was many years ago. Our 12-year anniversary is coming up in February. We are getting married in November. Thank you.

And we're going to do something very special for ourselves, and it will not include the Russian baths, but it might include Sade. That was David Crabb. David is the author of the memoir Bad Kid. He's also a teacher who has served as an instructor in our high school program. He actually helped coach Aliza's story about the crayons that we heard earlier in this hour. David's second memoir comes out later this year.

Not long after he told this story, he and Jack were married. Although they've never returned to the Russian baths, Sade still holds a very special place in their hearts. Personally, I can't hear a smooth operator without picturing David's face in that massage table donut. Our next storyteller is the late actor and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Sam Shepard.

He told the story of the night we produced with the World Science Festival way back in 2008. This hour is all about confidence, and this is a story about what can happen when you're a bit overconfident. It feels fitting that the theme of the night was "Toil and Trouble: Stories of Experiments Gone Wrong." Here's Sam Shepard, live at the Mock. I'm not a scientist. I'm not a mathematician or a physicist. I'm very flattered to be here with these distinguished people.

I wish I had some of the credentials they have. I thought maybe some of it might rub off on me. Also, I want to make it clear that writing and oral storytelling are not synonymous. In fact, they have little to do with each other. Back in the early 80s, I shot a film, which some of you may have seen, called The Right Stuff in the Mojave Desert out in California.

And when I got the script, in fact, one of the main reasons I did it was that there was this great chase scene at the beginning on horseback galloping. And the character I was playing was chasing his wife horseback across the desert, you know, figurating through the cactus and stuff. And I thought, wow, that's great. I'll do that. And at the time...

I was still trying to make an honest living. I had a couple of rope horses and I was team roping and doing jackpots and stuff like that. And I thought, well, I'll use one of my horses, which, you know, I got along with very well. I had a roan gelding called Rony. And

I thought, this is a nice horse, you know, I can get along with him. So I went with the director, long story short, and said, could I use my own horse in this sequence? And he said, sure, bring him. Not being a horseman himself. So first day of shooting, I show up on the set out in the Mojave with my horse trailer and my horse and my truck. And I'm not met by the director. I'm met by the head wrangler and the stuntman.

two legendary guys. This guy is called Choo-Choo Chambers. So I step out of the truck and Corky steps up. Immediately I understand there's a little attitude thing here. He says, we understand you want to use your own horse. I said, look,

Is it okay? I like the horse, I get along with it. The problem with it is that he's a red roan horse. I said, what's it mean? Well, we don't have anything to double you. In other words, they don't have a horse that looks like this horse so that when the stunt comes, they can put the stuntman on the horse that looks like my horse and they'll be all right. And I said, well, shoot, I'd still like to use this horse because I really, you know, I insisted like an idiot. And

So Choo Choo says, well, is it okay if I get up on your horse and see what he's like? I said, sure. So he gets up and goes up and he does figure eights and circles, backs him up a little bit and stops him. And the horse is fine. He's great. He gets off and he says, it's okay. But I just want to tell you, we have a serious stunt to do in this. And the insurance company is not going to let you do it because, first of all, you can't do it. Which is...

Which is true. And anyway, he said, okay, well, we'll see if we can get along with your horse and we'll do it. I said, okay. So next day I show up and we do the galloping sequence, which is beautiful and everything works great. Everybody loves the dailies, the footage, you know, it looks good. I'm chasing my wife through the desert and it's all picturesque. And comes time for the stunt. So...

This is a pretty hellacious stunt. It involves my character. I mean, in a film, you don't notice that it's not me because they hide behind hats and everything. Chichu is chasing my wife, and he heads toward the saguara cactus, which I don't know if you guys are familiar with it being in...

They're gigantic cactus. They're the biggest cactus on earth. You've probably seen them on the cover of Arizona highways or something. They look like big green men, you know. They have arms like this. So he's supposed to crash into this cactus and get knocked out of it, flips out of the saddle and gets his leg caught in the stirrup, which is all part of the stunt.

and then dragged about 25 yards and the stirrup breaks away and he's fine. He's safe and everything, but the stunt looks horrendous. And the way they do it is they cut the arm of the cactus off and they shave off all the spines and everything so that the stuntman doesn't get them in his face. And they put a balsa wood dowel

in the arm that saw it about a quarter of the way through, and they stick it back. This is the scientific part. I try to work all that stuff in. And then they stick the arm back onto the body of the cactus, the main body of the cactus, and to the untrained eye you can't tell that it's not a real cactus.

So anyway, when he hits the arm of this cactus, it snaps off because the dowel's in there and it breaks free and it looks as though he's actually hit the cactus where in fact it's nothing, you know. And then he does his stunt and it's all over. Well anyway, Choo Choo gets up on Rony and he lopes out there to do the stunt and I'm really kind of anxious about it. And he breaks him out into a wide open gallop. He's headed straight toward

the saguaro cactus, and as he's approaching the last few yards to accomplish this stunt, the horse looks down and he sees a big black electric cable about the diameter is about like that, which runs from the generators back to the lights. And he knows that that's not supposed to be in the desert. And he thinks maybe it's a snake. I don't know what he thinks.

But old Roni leaves the ground in mid-gallop, like all four legs come up away from this cable and consequently smashes directly into the trunk of the cactus, missing the arm completely. Choo-choo flips out of the saddle, but rather than breaking loose from the stirrup, he's dragged maybe 150 yards.

through really rough terrain. I'm of course completely aghast at this. I'm watching it live and everything. He goes to the hospital. He lost half an ear. He hit the truth. To this day he only has half an ear. But these guys are what they call blood and guts stuntmen and this is the reason they're called that.

He broke three ribs, broken collarbone, dislocated his hip, and had serious lacerations. I'm completely... I can't believe it. I go visit him in the hospital. And this is part of a stuntman's bread and butter, you know? I mean, they spend a lot of time in the hospital. Anyway, I go...

I go in, and he's all bandaged up, and he's laying there, and his limbs are this way and that and everything. And I apologize deeply for the horse's behavior. And he says, you know, being a good guy that he is, he says, ah, these things happen, you know, Sam. He says, but, you know, I'll tell you what. That might be a nice team roping horse, but he can't dodge a cactus for shit. laughter

So that was virtually the last time I tried to use my own livestock. And it was a lesson well learned, you know, but that's pretty much the only accident that I have in the scientific area. Sam Shepard was an actor who starred in the films Days of Heaven and The Right Stuff and the TV series Bloodline.

He was one of the most influential writers of his generation. He wrote more than 50 plays, including True West, Fool for Love, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Buried Child. He died in 2017 at the age of 71. Coming up, a young woman in Kenya thinks she's heading for boarding school until she realizes her father has something else in mind. That's next on the Moth Radio Hour.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by the public radio exchange, PRX.org. This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Katherine Burns. Our final story is from Sarah Lee Nkintu. We met Sarah Lee in one of the Moth's global community workshops on women and girls that we held in Kenya. After the workshop, Sarah Lee developed her story for a night we produced for the 71st UN General Assembly.

Here's Sarah Lee, live at Lincoln Center. When I was young, I grew up in a polygamous family. My father had two wives, and they were typical homekeepers. My mother was very submissive. I don't remember seeing her in any disagreement with my father. Even when she had a different opinion, she would just give in. And my mother was very hardworking. She used to go to the gardens every morning,

and would come back in the evening. That was her daily routine. I loved her, but I never wanted to be like her. I didn't want to be a gardener. I looked up someone different. My auntie, who is the sister to my father, was a businesswoman. She used to go to attend to our businesses every day, and she had a daily income. She always had cash on her. I admired her. I wanted to be like her. As a young girl,

I remember was so bright. I used to come in the first position for all the seven years of my junior school. I loved school. I loved studying. I always dreamed of the day I would graduate from university, but it seemed so far away. One Saturday, just like the other usual Saturdays, we used to go for farming. But this particular Saturday, my father asked me to stay home and do some house chores.

A thing that excited me. I hated farming. Standing under the sun all day, gardening was not my thing. So I jubilated. It was a blessing in disguise. Later in the day, the rest of the members came back from the gardens. And my father called me. He told me to go prepare myself because my auntie was coming with visitors. And by the mention of my auntie coming with visitors, I was so excited because this particular auntie

had promised to take me to a boarding school. So I knew this was my time. This was my day. I went and started preparing myself. But while at it, deep down me, I got sad. Because I was going to leave my mother, I did not want to leave her. But again, something else told me, you have to do this, Sarah. If you want to liberate your mother from the gardens, you have to go and study hard.

And suddenly I was re-energized. Yes, I was excited again and started my preparations. While in the bedroom, preparing and packing my clothes, I heard a knock at the door, and it was my mother. As she walked through the door, I noticed sadness in her eyes. I noticed sadness on her face. And I asked her, "Mom, why are you sad? Are you not happy for me? Don't you want me to go to a boarding school?"

I am not going forever. I'll come back and check on you. But in a very sad tone, she told me, my daughter, you're not going for school. You are going forever. You're going to start your own family and you're going for marriage. I asked her, mom, why? Where? To who? And who planned this? I asked her a lot of questions, but she never answered any.

We all broke down in tears and she walked away. As I was trying to wake up my soul from this very bad dream, I heard another knock and it was my auntie. She walked in so excited and told me to hurry up, go greet the visitors because they had come. I looked at her in disbelief and I asked her, "Auntie, is this the boarding school that you promised me? Are you throwing away my education?"

But she told me, no, this is even better than a boarding school. This is the best option for you. Things are going to be fine. But I did not believe her. I knew being a businesswoman, she looked at me more as a commodity than a daughter. She was more concerned with the dowry, with the bride price that they were going to pay in exchange for my hand in marriage. I felt so betrayed. But worst of all,

by the person that I looked up to, by the person that I admired. I felt disappointed that at 14 years, she wanted to marry me off. I couldn't believe her. I pulled myself together and went to the sitting room. I greeted the visitors. My father asked me, "Sarah, are you ready to go with this man?" Now I kept thinking to myself, "Is my father serious? He has already invited the visitors. The man is already here."

And he's asking me whether I am ready. Do I have a choice? Why didn't he ask me before? As I kept thinking this, all this was running through my mind. I heard a voice from the side of the corner of the house. And it was saying, "No, my daughter is not going for marriage until she finishes school." When I looked, it was my mother. My father barked at her and said, "Woman, who are you to talk back at me? Don't you know your position in this family?"

I said she has to go. But my mother answered in a very strong voice and said, no, she's not going anywhere. Our culture is so funny. Women are supposed to be submissive to the men. There is even a saying that when a man says something, a woman should not object. And a woman should not talk back at a man. But here we are. My mother, who I always knew to be very submissive,

had finally gathered strength to talk back at my dad. She surprised me. I didn't expect this from her. At this point in time, it was a whole lot of chaos. The visitors walked away, and our dad told my mother, if she's not ready to let me go for marriage, we have to pack our bags and leave the house, leave the home. It was clear now. We had to leave this home because my mother was not about to give up.

We packed our bags and ready to leave. As I was stepping out of the house, I got so scared. I did not know what was coming next. Yes, I did not want to go for marriage. But again, I was not sure going with my mother was the best option. I was not sure going with her, I would continue with my education because she did not have any source of income. We moved into a future that was not clear at all.

But we kept going. We left and stayed at a friend to my mom. And when finally my mom gathered some little money, we moved to a rented house. And we started life with a single mother. Life was not easy at all. It was hard. It was a challenging life. My mother was used to a life where she was being provided for. And here we are today.

She was the only provider of the home. She worked so hard, did different kinds of petty businesses to look for money. She sold samosas. She sold clothes and worked at a school as an office messenger, trying to raise money to look after us, to take me to school. And this continued. After a year, one day my mother called me and she told me, Sarah, I have gathered money.

I want to take you back to school and to a boarding school. I got so excited. She did it. I doubted her, but she had made it. She brought my dreams back alive. I got so proud of my mother. At first, I thought I would liberate her, but guess what? She had liberated me. She gave up what other women in our culture wanted. She gave up her marriage in fight for my education.

My mother, my hero. Thank you. That was Sarah Lee Nakintu. Sarah is a gender advocate who works on rights and education for women and girls. We spent this hour hearing stories about confidence, and I love how by finding her confidence, Sarah's mother changed the trajectory of her life.

And about her mother, Sarah says, she's now a college teacher as well as a laboratory technician. In fact, in our district, she's the only female laboratory technician. I am so proud of her. That's it for this episode. We hope you'll join us next time for the Moth Radio Hour. ♪

Your host this hour was The Moth's artistic director, Catherine Burns, who also directed the stories, along with Sarah Austin-Ginness, Michaela Bly, and Catherine McCarthy. Additional coaching in The Moth community and education programs by Dawn Frazier, David Crabb, and Melissa Brown.

The rest of the MOSS directorial staff includes Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson, and Meg Bowles. Production support from Timothy Liu Lee. Special thanks to the World Science Festival. David Crabb's story was produced in partnership with the Festival of Dangerous Ideas.

The Moth would like to thank the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for their support of the Moth Community Program. Moth Stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Regina Carter, Boombox, Sade, and Stellwagen Symphonette.

The Moth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison, with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.