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"We were not taught to be inferior, so we didn't feel inferior to nobody. We were just as bold as brass."

She asked, "Alfreda, why is your hand clean on this side and dirty on the other? That's not dirt.. and if you want to know why its a different color, you have to ask God, cause that's the way he made me."
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OVERVIEW The West African symbol of the Sankofa reminds us to always look back & remember from whence we have come so that we can sufficiently navigate the journey to where we are going.   My Grandmother’s voice & wisdom was one of the first ontological epistemologies (literacies). I knew well before I could speak, read, or write.  Indeed, hers along with those of my ancestors & my mother were infused in my mother’s womb. I am named Tyese Alfreda Brown, after my 92 year old maternal grandmother, Mrs. Alfreda Steele-Johnson. The center of our name is "fre".  Freedom has always been an important part of my identity as a Black girl child, adolescent and woman.  Thus it has been integral to my relationships.  I have encouraged my family, friends, & mentees to define freedom for themselves & to be unapologetic about it despite cultural, societal, familial, economic, & / or intellectual constraints.  
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My section is about Black Girl Freedom, the theme which is central to the books I have selected for this project.  1. Flossie & the Fox by Patricia C. McKissack, 2. Pushout by Monique Morris &, 3. The Summer We Got Free by Mia McKenzie. I engaged young women & girls in a discussion & creative arts project about strategies of survival to achieve freedom in Patricia McKissack’s Flossie & The Fox. Monique Morris’, Pushout highlights strategies of resistance that Black girls utilize in schools to defend themselves against disparate discipline. Mia McKenzie’s The Summer We Got Free relays strategies of liberation, remembrance that lead to healing & reconciliation.  In a world designed to keep Black girls’ captive & constrained each of these books illuminate Black girls’ acquired skills, their desires to thrive, & their unique journeys toward their very own individualized freedoms.
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Tyese is from West Chester, PA & she has lived in NYC for the past 20 years. She is clinical director of the RiseBoro Youth Center, in Brooklyn & supervises social workers who provide a myriad of social services to 2,500 youth annually. Tyese is the founder of Sister SAGE, a girls’ empowerment program that has provided over 300 girls of color with a safe space to experience intensive personal development through service, sisterhood, self-exploration & cultural empowerment since 2002. Tyese is a 3rd year social welfare PhD student. She loves to travel & spend time with her family.

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