Hear Bri Speak.

If my daughter wants to be an astronaut.

My daughter will grow up loved.

She will understand that her skin is not too dark

Her lips are NOT too big

And even with hips as wide as her mama’s,

She will understand that she is beautiful.

Code-Switching and the Destruction of Ebonics.

Code-switching is a very important topic in the black community because it’s something we do regularly. We have our own way of speaking, which causes arguments on the legitimacy of the language and questions on where it can be used. Full disclosure, AAVE (African American Vernacular English) is a language and, despite the plentiful arguments that it is not, pretending that something doesn’t exist will not take away from the legitimacy of it. AAVE is often stigmatised because it is not seen as an official language and to many, since it’s such a broken-down version of English, it sounds ‘uneducated’. Words like ‘finna’, ‘gon’, ‘yo’, etc. are commonly used across the US by people of every race, creed, and kind. While it has been in the black community forever, it has grown increasingly popular in today’s culture.

Imposter Syndrome: The Post-Grad Phenomenon.

Do you ever just feel like a fraud? There I was in the middle of sending a job application when I stopped and exited the app. I was applying for some magazine I had adored, but I didn’t feel like I had the qualifications to be considered, so I quit halfway. Here’s the thing: I spent my college years writing for my school’s newspaper, Her Campus, The Odyssey, and any other media platform that would take me. So, I would say that I had enough experience, but still, I felt like a fraud. This is something I constantly experienced when it came to opportunities in my field. I would even downplay my experience and achievements because it didn’t feel like much. Does this sound familiar?