I am an interdisciplinary, Black feminist scholar who interrogates how intersections of identities are negotiated across institutions and inscribed onto the body. It is through my experiences growing up in the Cabrini Green neighborhood of Chicago that I learned to ask sociological questions about Black life and culture - I learned first from the real world, then from academia, and still do. My experience of girlhood was defined by the hard-talking women in their 20s and 30s who shared their wisdom through “real talk” with the neighborhood girls, letting us do and say things we’d never do in front of our parents.

 

I am the daughter of a mother who has always cared for others; she’s everyone’s auntie and has never met a stranger. My mom let me make the tough decisions about school choice and what was best in my educational journey. My father was a Chicago peddler and hustler, a Southern boy from Eudora, Arkansas who saw wars on two fronts - in Vietnam and the South. My third parent is my stepdad who walks like Denzel, did my hair early mornings on school days, bought me menstrual products during my first period, and read my first publication with tears in his eyes - a true #girldad. It is from this triad that I learned to be so many things to thrive in so many spaces.