My Arched Back Is a Bridge: On Negotiating African Identity, Home, and Place

• In Event: Living This Bridge Called Our Backs: An Intergenerational Dialogue by Women of Color

Abstract

In This Bridge, Barbara Cameron (1981) describes others’ responses to her identity as a Lakota Indian: “Gee, you don’t seem like an Indian from the reservation” (p. 41). Cameron’s voice illustrates the struggle of people of color who navigate identities within education. A similar response for the author is this: “You don’t look like one, so how are you African?” This paper theorizes these always shifting bridges of home, place and identity. Particularly, the author uses her own back (a bridge that spans the Atlantic) as a metaphor for the experiences of children of African heritage who travel on historical “backs,” often bent and bowed from the burden of forced allegiance to one identity or the other in schools and society.

Author

• Chinwe Linda Okpalaoka, The Ohio State University