During her teenage years, Maya Angelou found her self temporarily living in a junkyard with a community of homeless teens.
"Odd that the homeless children, the stilt of war frenzy, could initiate me into the brotherhood of man. After hunting down unbroken bottles and selling them with a white girl from Missouri, a Mexican girl from Los Angeles and a Black girl from Oklahoma, I was never again to sense myself so solidly outside the pale of the human race. The lack of criticism evidenced by our ad hoc community influenced me, and set a tone of tolerance for my life."
(p. 247)I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou. Copyright 1969, by Maya Angelou.