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There was a trap house across the street and prostitutes on the corner two blocks from her school bus stop — and Sylvia says she never felt scared, because that neighborhood also taught her who she is.

In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, singer Sylvia of the band Sabor Puro opens up about growing up Mexican-American in Dallas's Webb Chapel neighborhood, the shame she once felt speaking Spanish in front of her white friends, and the seventh-grade talent show where dancing to Selena changed how she saw her own culture.

She talks about being raised largely by her older sisters while her dad battled leukemia, coming from a family of musicians going back to her grandparents' conjunto, and the anxiety that eventually sent her to therapy in college after it started affecting her performances. She also opens up, for the first time in this conversation, about being diagnosed with Graves' disease — an autoimmune disorder that attacks the thyroid — and the fear that she might lose her ability to sing altogether.

Listeners will hear about the years she spent going back and forth between shame and pride in her identity, the specific moment a sex worker in her neighborhood told her to keep getting good grades, and how she eventually found her people — and her voice — through a performing arts magnet school built around the same halls that shaped artists like Erykah Badu and Norah Jones.

This is a Mexican-American identity story, a family story, and a health story, told by someone who grew up two blocks from the streets she now sings about overcoming. Part 2 continues the story soon.

In this episode:

• How a Selena talent-show performance in 7th grade became the turning point in Sylvia's relationship with her own culture
• What it was like growing up near Harry Hines Blvd. in Webb Chapel, Dallas
• How being placed in different academic tracking groups in middle school shaped her sense of belonging
• Why Sylvia went to therapy for performance anxiety in college
• What it was like being diagnosed with Graves' disease mid-career, and why she chose daily medication over surgery to protect her voice

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