Everyone reads Harper Lee personally. For me, 'Mockingbird' was about admitting my own hyphenated identity - about loving and hating my world, about both belonging and not belonging to the community I came from.

I came to love, I came into my own.

When I was just a twenty-something, I came to Newark, and I found a connection to the city in a spiritual way. I found a connection here and people here that reminded me so much of my roots and my own family.

My father's peripatetic career also gave me critical perspective when it came to my own career choices.

I first read Harper Lee's 'To Kill a Mockingbird' as a teen in school, like you did. I read the book alone, eating lunch at my locker, neatly scored oranges my mother divided into five lines with a circle at the top, so my fingers could dig more easily into the orange skin. To this day, the smell of oranges reminds me of 'Mockingbird.'

I'm Owen Hart and I have my own identity and my own style.