Birthday: July 7, 1985
Yes, I am a cancer and can get moody from time to time. It comes with the package - you either "love me or leave me."
Childhood: At three weeks old I was promptly whisked out of Washington D.C. and taken to the Ivory Coast, where my parents were working for the U.S. State Department. During the first eighteen years of my life I lived in five countries on four continents, predominantly in South East Asia and West Africa.
I remember walking to school along the old corniche, which was not more than a red dirt road, in Dakar. When I was 9, I started a theater company called RCKC with my next door neighbor and produced everything from an improvised Swan Lake (in which we switched roles during intermission to make things fair) to a full-blown musical rendition of West Side Story (in which my mom, God bless her, played Tony). My memories of Senegal as a child are filled with tree-climbing, beach digging, mango and ceeb eating, and a wonderfully fantastical world of make-believe.
After Senegal I lived in Jakarta, Indonesia (6 years) and Lugano, Switzerland (1 year) and traveled often to Accra, Ghana (over 5 years), where my family lived.
"For me, optimism comes out of patience. It comes out of knowing how hard the facts of the world are, and the refusal to be defined by that..." - Ben Okri
Family: I am familiar with several places, but not fluent in any one. I adapt well to any environment, but cannot claim a single place as home. The one constant in my life has been my relationships with family and friends, regardless of where I am in the world. My parents, Sharon and Arnold, and younger sister, Simone, have been the pillars of support in my life, buttressed by extended family (Cromer/Keene/Sobers/ tatas and tontons). My friends, scattered and mobile as they are, represent a vast network of lifelines. I value the richness of our conversations, the diversity of our intertwined histories, and the constant molding process of our life-long influences on each other.
Education:
International School of Dakar (1991-1996)
Jakarta International School (1996-2002)
The American School in Switzerland (2002-2003)
Barnard College (2003-2007)
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. -J. Krishnamurti
Fun:
SALSA!
Going to the beach.
Chilling in my hammock with a good book.
Girls' Night.
Cooking and eating.
Writing.
WOMANIST
1. From womanish. (Opp. of "girlish," i.e. frivolous, irresponsible, not serious.) A black feminist or feminist of color. From the black folk expression of mothers to female children, "you acting womanish," i.e., like a woman. Usually referring to outrageous, audacious, courageous or willful behavior. Wanting to know more and in greater depth than is considered "good" for one. Interested in grown up doings. Acting grown up. Being grown up. Interchangeable with another black folk expression: "You trying to be grown." Responsible. In charge. Serious.
2. Also: A woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers women's culture, women's emotional flexibility (values tears as natural counterbalance of laughter), and women's strength. Sometimes loves individual men, sexually and/or nonsexually. Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. Not a separatist, except periodically, for health. Traditionally a universalist, as in: "Mama, why are we brown, pink, and yellow, and our cousins are white, beige and black?" Ans. "Well, you know the colored race is just like a flower garden, with every color flower represented." Traditionally capable, as in: "Mama, I'm walking to Canada and I'm taking you and a bunch of other slaves with me." Reply: "It wouldn't be the first time."
3. Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless.
4. Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.
Alice Walker
In Search of our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose
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