Kamara JAMES

Kamara James was born in Jamaica but moved to Queens, New York at age 10, where she excelled in school, earning scholarships to The Dwight School and later Princeton. James started fencing with the Peter Westbrook Foundation and funded her own training and travel by reaching out to sponsors and donors with a detailed business plan. She qualified for the 2004 Olympics by winning a bronze medal at a World Cup event in Katowice, Poland. James retired from fencing after the Athina Olympics and returned to Princeton, where she earned a degree in religious studies. She was accepted into a graduate program in comparative religion at Harvard. James suffered from schizophrenia and various mental difficulties and spent much of her 20s in halfway houses or on the streets and homeless. Her very early death was attributed to her difficulties with those disorders.