America (West Side Story song) America (West Side Story song) “America” is a song from the musical "West Side Story". Stephen Sondheim wrote the lyrics and Leonard Bernstein composed the music. In the original stage version, Anita – the most important female character after Maria and the girlfriend of Bernardo, the leader of the Sharks – praises America while a fellow Puerto Rican immigrant, Rosalia, supports Puerto Rico. This version of the song deprecates the island and highlights the positive qualities of American life ("I’ll drive a Buick through San Juan/If there’s a road you can drive on"). The irony of this supposedly pro-American number,
Stephen Sondheim parents divorced, on a farm near Doylestown, Pennsylvania. As the only child of well-to-do parents living in the San Remo on Central Park West, he was described in Meryle Secrest's biography ("Stephen Sondheim: A Life") as an isolated, emotionally-neglected child. When he lived in New York, Sondheim attended ECFS, the Ethical Culture Fieldston School known simply as "Fieldston". He later attended the New York Military Academy and George School, a private Quaker preparatory school in Bucks County, Pennsylvania where he wrote his first musical, "By George," and from which he graduated in 1946. Sondheim spent several summers at Camp Androscoggin.