Fish Out Of Agua:
My Life On Neither Side Of The (subway) Tracks

A voice blared from the loudspeaker at the Puerto Rican Day parade. "Will the family who brought the little redheaded white girl please come to the bandstand to pick her up?" I looked around. Wait a minute. I am at the bandstand. I am that lost girl!

Michele Carlo, a reheaded freckle-faced Puerto Rican raised in an Italian/Irish section of The Bronx, grew up as a double outsider. Too white for her proud Spanish-speaking relatives and a mystery to her schoolmates, Michele braved a search for identity that was a long, rough-and-tumble ride.

By turns heartbreaking and humorous, she recalls the family calamities, fumblings of growing up and all the people and events who shaped her. From the "playground battlefield" in the not so wholesome summer of '69, to graffiti-filled afternoons and high school race riots in the '70s to art school in the new wave '80s and her emergence as an artist with a unique and alluring voice, Michele's story is an homage to New York City...and an iconically American, unforgettable portrait of growing up.