Childhood and Young Adult Life
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Waters is the daughter of Betty and Junior Waters, a famed jazz musician; her great aunt, Ethel Waters, was one of the first African-American vocalists to appear in mainstream Hollywood musicals. The family lived in New Jersey for a while but they again moved to Washington, D.C.. At age eleven she began writing poetry and took her writing seriously enough to be inducted into the American Poetry Society when she was 14, the youngest person ever to receive that honor.
She studied business and computer science at Howard University, but her creative work dropped off as she found less time for it. After earning her college degree in 1985, Waters secured a job as a computer technician with the Washington, D.C. parole board, making a living that would support her two children.
Read more about this topic: Crystal Waters
Famous quotes containing the words adult life, childhood, young, adult and/or life:
“Fashions change, and with the new psychoanalytical perspective of the postwar period [WWII], child rearing became enshrined as the special responsibility of mothers ... any shortcoming in adult life was now seen as rooted in the failure of mothering during childhood.”
—Sylvia Ann Hewitt (20th century)
“But childhood prolonged, cannot remain a fairyland. It becomes a hell.”
—Louise Bogan (1897–1970)
“Another appealing aspect to having grandparents is that they do help, to give [your child] a sense of continuity—of his place in the world and in the generations. Not only do grandparents help him intellectually to comprehend that there are parents of parents, but they also aid him in understanding where he fits in the succession of things. Even a very young child can begin to feel a sense of rootedness and history.”
—Lawrence Balter (20th century)
“Children who are pushed into adult experience do not become precociously mature. On the contrary, they cling to childhood longer, perhaps all their lives.”
—Peter Neubauer (20th century)
“On wings of morning our prayers and devotions are soaring.
All of creation awakens, the Maker adoring.
Join in the song. Harmonies blending along,
Vigor and life now restoring.”
—Jane Parker Huber (b. 1926)