blackacrylic:

01.11.10

Malcolm X, ‘WHO ARE YOU?’

I’m trying to find the answers to these questions because I think that self awareness is the greatest gift that you can give to yourself. For the majority of my life I had my identity dictated to me - force fed to me. I didn’t start to actually think about my identity seriously until I was around 17. Yes, I knew I was an African girl, but what is an African girl? What is an African, London girl? What is her relationship with the law, the land, the institutions around her? I remember when I was applying to University and one of my teachers asked me if I had a favourite black author. I looked at him confused. I had spent my whole reading life digesting the English Canon. I could recite a number of Shakespeare’s soliloquies, but I couldn’t wrack my brain for a credible black writer. It was this and a number of other incidents that made me realise that I had a black hole in my mind that I needed to fill if I was ever going to define myself. I’m in the process of filling in that black hole.