African Mother Scholar

African Mother Scholar is a poem born out of my disillusionment with life, love, and womanhood. As an African woman, immigrant, mother, and scholar, I am forced to come to terms with conflicting identities, a colonial past, and present patriarchal structures. In search of both who I am and who I want to become, I find myself questioning long held cultural beliefs on my role as a wife and mother and how these beliefs align with my desire for intellectual growth. It is in this state of ontological flux that I find a newfound sense of freedom, power, and control. My search for knowledge–for truth, healing, and identity–both unravels and remakes me. In these halls of knowledge, I experience never ending conversations, community, and laughter, as if returning from a distant homeland. I find myself dreaming of the impossible. I am finally the author of my own story.