Michele Amira

From The Washington Post

Published May 15, 2021

By Matt Schudel

Michele Amira (also known as Michele Pinczuk), who channeled her struggles with autism and a chronic inflammatory illness into various creative outlets as a writer, filmmaker and college-station hip-hop DJ, died May 1 at a hospice facility in Derwood, Md. She was 27.

Ms. Pinczuk (pronounced Pin-chuck), who was diagnosed with autism in elementary school, also had a range of social anxiety disorders that limited her ability to learn in standard classroom settings.

“I was misdiagnosed at an early age with other mental illnesses because I didn’t fit into any particular box,” she wrote in a 2019 essay for heyalma.com.

“I see, hear, and feel the world differently than most other people,” she added, “and to be honest, I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

When she left school after the fourth grade, she was functionally illiterate. She was home-schooled for eight years, with visits to special-education teachers, one of whom taught her to read and write when she was 11. Within two years, she was a published writer and a budding filmmaker.

Ms. Pinczuk was 14 when she made a four-minute documentary, “L’Chaim Israel,” which contains images of Jewish tragedy and triumph and interviews with Holocaust survivors — including her grandfather. The film was shown at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, making Ms. Pinczuk one of the youngest directors ever selected for the prestigious international festival in France. She went to Cannes with help from the Make-A-Wish foundation.

In the meantime, Ms. Pinczuk became one of the youngest contributors to the New York Times Book Review, after asking the editor why children’s books were reviewed by adults and not by children.

At 14, she wrote a young-adult novel, “Sparkle,” about a girl named Diamond who had a life-threatening disease and struggled with some of the same social issues, including bullying, faced by Ms. Pinczuk. The book included a foreword by rap artist Big Sean, and the two of them — accompanied by their mothers — toured schools together.

Borrowing a name associated with the late hip-hop performer Tupac Shakur, Ms. Pinczuk wrote the novel as Michele Amira, a pseudonym she often used. She had considerable knowledge of hip-hop music and, after enrolling at the University of Maryland in 2010, hosted a hip-hop show, “The Mecca,” on the university’s student-run station, WMUC-FM, for more than four years.

In 2010, after writing an essay called “Trapped in the Attic,” Ms. Pinczuk received the Spirit of Anne Frank Award from the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect.

“Fortunately, I’ve never had to endure the horrors that were inflicted upon Anne,” Ms. Pinczuk wrote, “but I understand the importance of living and not merely surviving — the power of hope and the influence of writing. Although I’ve had to come to grips with my own mortality through battling chronic illness, I appreciate Anne’s implication of living on after death. Even though you die, your words can still flourish.”