Merrill Singer

I am a medical anthropologist, although I did not set out to be one. I am a public health drugs and AIDS researcher, although I did not set out to do that either. Careers are not planned, often you just stumble into them, like relationships. So fall well! I was born to working class parents who were raised in the shadow of Pittsburg's steel mills, but I was primarily raised in Los Angeles. In fact, I am a "Valley Boy," but when I first moved there one could still find muddy horse farms and vast orange groves instead of endless small stuccoed homes, corner shopping plazas, and more cars than is good for any planet suffering from global warming. I went to community college without the slightest idea I would one day be considered a scholar. But imagining myself as an author of books then was rather unlikely. I wanted to be a social worker back then; then the Vietnam War happened and woke me up. I have not been back to sleep in that sense since. My books reflect lessons first learned during that war and in the many wars since. As well, they reflect lessons on poverty and social injustice first learned working for the United Farm Worker's Union and lessons about social equality from the Civil Rights movement. I am, in addition to all of the above, a father of two. Both college student now. Like most parents, I love them more than they will ever know. As my friend Patty Marshall is inclined to say "life is rich." To which my more cynical side always replies "but I am not." Now I live in Connecticut.