When I was eight, I scored so high on an IQ test at school that two women from Columbia University came to test me at home. I'd far up in the genius range--much higher than my brother. But since I was a girl, this was an embarrassment for my family, better forgotten." Born to troubled and downwardly mobile parents, Sylvia Hart Wright scrabbled her way to Ivy League degrees, a free spirit's globe-trotting lifestyle, and roles...