7ins

0x4…b5e

ERC1155

Like many other brown-skinned girls, I grew up feeling embarrassed about my blackness. For many years, I struggled to love my broad nose, my nappy hair, my oversized lips, my ashy brown skin. Having grown up in white spaces, I learnt to admire the eurocentric ideal - for me, white was king. I internalized the idea that being light-skinned or having straight hair was needed for me to be beautiful. The irony is that in white spaces, I never felt enough because I was too dark. But in black spaces, I never felt accepted because I was too ‘white’. With time, education, and inner work, these notions started to fade away. I studied the places that I came from, the people that came before me and the systems that impoverished my sense of being. I now know that my feelings of being ‘lesser than’ were manufactured, and that my black - is beautiful. I wear my skin with pride for it carries my history and my legacy. Alter ego: Nana Yaa