May 20 2021 43 mins
“I had to make a shift from saying, like, oh, I am from Sierra Leone because literally people just didn't know where it was. They had no idea. And there is only so much of like a geography lesson I want to do in an introduction, like, all right, let's simplify this. I am African. So, I remember making this shift that first year in the United States where I was no longer Sierra Leonean first. I was African first. And I was black first. You know that these two identities really shaped my experience in a big way, and it was stark and difficult to manage.”