About Me

Born in Kingston; reared in Brooklyn; matured in South Florida; raised the first-born in St. Louis; returned to South Florida to continue nurturing; consciously chose life back in the Midwest. 

This sentence encapsulate my beginnings, my growth, an who I am becoming. As an immigrant who came to the US at eight years old, I live in a place of double-consciousness, coined by W.E.B Dubois in regards to Black Folks "racialized oppression and disvaluation in a white-dominated society" (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-consciousness/). My double consciousness can also refer to my feeling, at times, as a native born American because of the many years I have lived in America and my immigrant identity because of my heritage which traces back to the Caribbean island nation of Jamaica. My immigrant identity often went unrecognized or noticed because I did not have an accent, and English is my first and only language. It wasn't until my conversion to Islam that my immigrant identity became pronounced when I donned the hijab. Thus when I think of my intersectionality I think of my race: Black, my gender: female and my faith/religion: Islam.  I am also a proud mother of three and a wife to one. Professionally, I remain an educator.  More specifically an educator of high school students with a focus on English Language Arts (ELA). As a mother of three, a wife to one and a daughter to several, I have deepened sense of my purpose in this life and remain grateful for being gifted it.