"A Daughter's Tale" by Leza Z. My father has been a cab driver for the past twenty years. We have lived on his meager his earnings. I have been, at different periods, upset and ashamed by this fact, or the financial consequence of it. As an adolescent, I sometimes argued with my parents: anger at dad because he could not provide us with things the regular American kids had. My adolescent rage focused on that broken middle-aged man: our lack of THINGS, things that all the teenage girls had; my lanky, brown body unnoticed by the objects of my infatuation, the American boys and girls; my accent, every so slight, almost imperceptible, but there; my name, just different enough to be noticed. I have graduated from college this year. Dad is growing old. He's begun to have health problems from the years of driving, sitting, gripping the steering wheel. He can no longer make fists with his hands. I have high aspirations for my future. Dad has his own aspirations for me, different from my own. Still occasional conflicts, clashes, differences. Only I am a little more humble now. I understand. My heart breaks when I think about how little he has had. How is it possible that here, in America (the wonderful sweet sweet dream for which dad left everything), that there should be so much pain? The South Asian cab drivers, the Mexican day-laborers, the Pakistani street-sweepers-- why is the value of some lives less in America than that of others? I'd like to know, how well-off-Americans, the ones with the 6 million dollar apartments in Manhattan (like the obnoxious woman in your program), are able to sleep at night without thinking about this question? America. America.