"I was riding a bicycle through my neighborhood in Little Italy nearly twenty-five years ago. Suddenly, a blast of light flashed into my eyes. Its source was a group of kids standing with a mirror, focusing the sun on my face, nearly blinding me. That was the day I met the Prince Street girls, the name I gave the group that hung out on the nearby corner almost every day. I was the stranger who didn't belong. Little Italy was mostly for Italians then. The girls were from small Italian-American families and they were almost all related. Sometimes they would reluctantly introduce me to their parents...