Chapter 8: I Am a Composite of All My Experiences

Looking at someone from the outside, you never really know what struggles that person has experienced and witnessed. Most of my acquaintances and co-workers look at me and assume that my background and life story are the same as theirs. As an African American woman, my struggle is often subsumed within the common culture and practices of my surroundings. I am often not asked to share myself outside of the cursory ‘How was your weekend?’ and even then, most don’t really want to entertain the details. They ask because they think it is polite or right to do so.

In reality, if most of my co-workers and peers knew my background, they would be surprised. Not because I am the exception to some unwritten rule (although in their minds I may be due to being professionally successful), but because the expectation for a Black girl from Newark, New Jersey, who was born to a teen mom, is not that she will go on to achieve the highest level of education in her field . . . the expectation is that she would certainly be an urban statistic.