The hardest part of my woke journey was having to kiss my white and brown mentors goodbye. It was having to come home to the idea that the women I so profoundly loved and admired simply didn't have the tools to liberate me because the world treated them in a way it did not treat me. I very graciously packed all the lessons they gave me.
But liberation only came when I met other Dominican women, whose hair also grew towards the sky. That could make me understand the social position of my body, those who believed me when I said that men only look at women like me as something to sleep with.
Who could understand precisely what I meant with being the brightest person in a room and still be dismissed. Those who didn't question my insecurity but could point me exactly to the place it came from.
I had no idea I could reclaim my own power until other Dominican women in the diaspora showed up.
and I'm not gorgeous, smart, talented and brilliant in spite of being a black Latina immigrant, I'm all of these things because of it.
