Growing up as a l'il Black girl on the eastside of Blo or Buffalo NY, depending on who you be, I located my voice first in dance and movement expression and then in poetry. Writing in notebooks, I learned to listen to myself and ancestors as well as follow my curiosity. When I wasn't in my closet scribbling in my notebook, I kept busy in sports, enrichment programs, dance, step, and more. In the world outside of the one I made on the page, I learned lots about how the world read me. I learned early on that a body could be positioned as desired and expendable simultaneously, that depending on what side of the city I was, I best mind what time of day it was, and that mostly A's at a reputable all girl's Catholic high school didn't automate avid support from my guidance counselor.
Growing up as a l'il Black girl on the eastside of Blo or Buffalo NY, depending on who you be, I learned about wooden nickels from my great grandma. I learned aunties aren't always your blood and sometimes get paid to walk the streets. I learned sun downs aren't only in the South or Midwest and I learned how to contour myself to get what I was going after. I learned about the gift of being Black while experiencing being read as dark skinned and later light skinned in my life. Later, I'd learn how this life of living on the eastside prepared me for deep curiosity, research, and inquisitiveness around embodiment, Black girlhood, and the work of mattering.
This more grown up, seasoned Black girl from the eastside of Blo or Buffalo NY, depending on who you be, took the insights and asked more questions, took the curiosity and wrote a book. I wrote this for us, Blo and Black girls young and youthful, youthful and seasoned, and not yet.
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