Like many other brown-skinned girls, I grew up feeling embarrassed about my blackness. For many years, I struggled to love my broad nose, my nappy hair, my oversized lips, my ashy brown skin. Having grown up in white spaces, I learnt to admire the eurocentric ideal – for me, white was king. 

I internalized the idea that being light-skinned or having straight hair was needed for me to be beautiful.

The irony is that in white spaces, I never felt enough because I was too dark. But in black spaces, I never felt accepted because I was too ‘white’. 

With time, education, and inner work, these notions started to fade away. I studied the places that I came from, the people that came before me and the systems that impoverished my sense of being. I now know that my feelings of being ‘lesser than’ were manufactured, and that my black, my Asian – is beautiful. I wear my skin with pride for it carries my history and is at the heart of my legacy.

Alter ego: Nana Yaa

I once heard of this place in a far away land, where women reign and roam free. A paradise some may call it, where the land is vast and the bounty is plentiful. Where time moves slower, for you do not have to be here nor there. This is a world free of judgement and free of care, where women could dance without shame, let down their hair, and reconnect with their inner goddesses.  

It is said that in this world, women live as one with nature – there is no pollution, poverty or hunger. For all of the land’s resources are harvested sustainably, and only what is needed to be taken leaves the earth. 

This place always seemed like an exotically strange place to me. I grew up in the city – concrete is all I know. These days, people never choose to leave the city, they are only forced to. If you cannot maintain the wealth standard, then you are pushed out. Everyone is dispensable, and this pushes us city-folk to strive to be greater everyday. 

But in this world of women, they do not have this motivation. I question why anyone would want to move out there, to resort to growing their own food or live without modern technology. Why would anyone want to live somewhere where the land is richer than its people?

I ask myself why anyone would prefer the quiet of the night over the hum of the city, or to sleep under the stars over partying with stars all night.

Above all, I cannot bring myself to understand this one thing, that people cannot own possessions in this world. Everyone owns everything and nothing at all at the same time. 

Alter ego: Alice

What is it about food on a table that brings out the best and worst of us? Is it that we each bring our baggage with us, our weekly woes, our resentments and attestations? Or is it because we so deeply want to let that baggage go by being with people who help us forget, yet sometimes also force us to remember?

When our family gets together at Mom’s place, our dinner becomes a reality tv show. From Lashaundra spitting out profanities with a mouth full of rice and peas, to Nanny trying to film anyone slipping up to use it as blackmail, there really never is a dull moment. 

When I think of our family drama, Leonardo DaVinci’s The Last Supper comes to mind. People have been fighting over dinner tables since the beginning of time. I always loved the expressions of the faces of the apostles standing around the table. How outraged they look, how utterly pissed off. In the center sits Jesus, his face looking so different from the others. Despondent, defeated, fatigued. I mean I get it, I would feel the same way if I knew that someone from my inner circle would betray me. What do you do when the people who you hold closest are the ones that cause you the most pain? Do you learn how to break bread over your differences, or do you find a way to bury them?

Alter ego: Makeba

As a woman of color, I have always felt like I have had to defend my body. It began with the stares, then the whistles, then the gropes. Then the demands for the attention to be reciprocated, followed by the anger when it was not delivered. 

But then I became tired. I became tired of men assuming that my body was theirs to touch, to grab, to call. I was tired of men claiming me with their eyes, using their gaze to take what was not given to them. These are subtle acts of control and power that are so deeply entrenched in patriarchal systems and equally in our social fabric. And I became tired of fighting them, so tired that there were times that I gave in. In those moments, I knew that I was being pulled away from the woman that I was destined to be.

For years, society told me that my black body was meant to be fetishized and exoticized. That I was only suited to be token, object and other. And although I knew that they were wrong, what do you do when the world around you makes you think that they are right?

However, with the global reckoning for racial justice and equality that we have seen over the years, I soon learnt that I was not alone – that I was actually one of many. Because, like me, women all over the world were tired –  and have been for a long time. 

Equipped with my own artillery and backed by an army of badass women, I am able to reclaim the power that was taken from me. I have learnt how to create my own representations, own my differences, and stand up for what is mine while also paying homage to the women who dared to stand before me so that I can now stand beside them.

I have learnt how to celebrate my body, my sexuality, my soul, my essence. My body is mine to carry, to love, to decorate, to celebrate. 

Everyday I walk into my power and manifest the strong, vibrant and resilient woman that I am. The woman that I always wanted to be. 

Alter ego: Maya

I have always been a lover of darkness. People often avoid darkness; they fear what lies in it and what they cannot see. But without darkness, we would never know light. And that’s why I was drawn to her. 

She would always come out when the world was quiet. At times during my dreams, but mostly when the world was still – when no one else could hear us. At first she did not speak. She kept to herself, it seemed like she was in a dream world, or could see ghosts that I could not see. I would follow her around, observing her movements, her ticks, her discomforts. They seemed foreign yet familiar. She would often appear with new wounds, on her knees, feet and arms. But with time I noticed that they were not new – she would pick at old ones before they healed and until they began to bleed again.

When we sat by the fire, she told me of her wounds. The first time was when she was fifteen, the second was when she was twenty five. Two incidents, ten years apart that completely shaped the woman that she had become and the way that she moved through life as a woman. 

The first, she internalized as she entered into womanhood and began to form her identity. The second, as that formation solidified. I asked her if that is why she did not speak. She nodded. Her earliest years of independence have been defined by her body being taken from her. She would not allow them to take her voice from her too. 

We would meet by the fire more frequently. She began to tell me about her past with more ease. We went deeper into her feelings of shame, unworthiness and inadequacy, and how she blamed herself for what had happened to her. All of these feelings were intertwined. As she dove deeper, she began to untangle them, thread by thread, moment by moment, feeling by feeling. Once she learnt to understand how she was affected by trauma, she was able to grow, forgive and release.

She too became comfortable with darkness, for she no longer feared it. It was only when she sat with her shadow, that she was able to embrace the light. 

Alter ego: Joyce

Our paths crossed in Accra. We were staying at the same hostel and immediately clicked. She was a traveler, like I, and had a rebellious soul. I liked how outgoing and open she was. 

She came to visit me a few weeks later. We came home after having a bit too much to drink. I remember our bodies locking as they lined up on the bed. Our hands caressed each other’s bodies, feeling the lines and curves tucked in our skin. Her lips met mine, she kissed me gently at first, and then harder. I bit her lip. I rolled on top of her as my lips made their way to different parts of her body. First her neck, followed by her collarbone.

My lips then trailed lower as I began to suck on her beautiful brown nipples. My tongue encircled them and then flicked them lightly. I teethed her, I always felt that pleasure was best paired with pain. I brought my finger to her clit and my tongue to meet it. She gasped at the initial impact, and then moaned. I slowly crept my finger inside her. She was wet with anticipation. I continued to lick her and kiss her. Her moans elevated. I inserted another finger, and then another. I could hear how wet she was. 

She trembled as her moans grew louder –  it seemed like she was going to erupt. And then her body tightened as she released one last gasp. I held my tongue at her clit to help her come down. She clenched again, and released. I savoured her for one last moment. I looked up at her and our eyes connected. 

She smiled, I laughed. 

My lips rose and met her mouth. We embraced. 

Then the night turned black. And although it all seemed so real, sometimes I question whether it actually happened or if it was all in my head. 

Alter ego: Billie

There were twin sisters who were separated at birth. Eve was adopted by a wealthy suburban family who adored her and showered her with love. Rosetta was not so lucky. She was placed in a foster home with parents who were in it for the money, who hit her and beat her until her tears ran dry. Yet despite her toxic upbringing, she never let her family problems seep into her schooling. She channeled her frustrations by working harder in school, and drowning herself in books to help her escape reality. 

With a strange twist of fate, the sisters crossed each other’s paths one day. The poor sister had received a scholarship, which gave her a full pass through secondary studies. That is where she met Eve, and where they became friends. With time they grew close, and eventually inseparable. 

But when they were 17, Eve began hanging with a new crowd. They exposed her to a new world, where she picked up their bad habits. Eve and Rosetta’s relationship began to change. Rosetta felt out of place because she could not relate to Eve’s world of luxury and mischief. She needed to take school seriously to survive. And with this tear, their friendship began to crumble. They were on different paths. And therefore had different fates awaiting them. 

Ten years later, the sisters met once again. Rosetta had been dropping off some old clothes at a shelter when she saw Eve waiting in line. She looked the same yet so different, like a shell of her old self. She invited Eve to stay over at her place. Eve accepted.   

At first Eve did not say much, for what was there to say? She could see her sister eying the marks on her arms and wrists. She was embarrassed, ashamed of the final memories she had of their relationship. But most of all, she was ashamed that Rosetta had made more money than she had ever dreamed of. That the two of them had exchanged fates and that she was now a shadow of her previous self. Yet Rosetta was kind, she let Eve stay as long as she needed to get back on her feet. She didn’t ask questions. You could tell that her support came from a good place. 

One morning, Eve met Rosetta in the kitchen before she headed to work and handed her an apple. After Rosetta bit into it, she took a long look at Eve and knew that this would be her last. For their reconnection was never a coincidence. Eve no longer saw Rosetta as blood, she saw her as a means to an end. 

Alter ego: Eve