"Ethiopia on My Skin, Black Power in My Heart" Essay on Being Being Black and Bicultural

“Ethiopia has long stood as a symbol of Black empowerment. The problem with this narrative is not only the way it glosses over the plurality of Ethiopian identity and the struggles faced by people like the Oromo, but also the confusion it caused for a young bicultural child like myself.”

This book explores Black identity, from a global perspective. The historical and contemporary migrations of African peoples have brought up some interesting questions regarding identity. This text examines some of those questions, and will provide relevant essays on the identities created by those migrations. Following a regional contextualizing of migration trends, the personal essays with allow for understandings of how those migrations impacted personal and community identities. Each of the personal essays will be written by bicultural Africans/Blacks from around the world. The essays represent a wide spectrum of experiences and viewpoints central to the bicultural Africans/Black experience. The contributors offer poignant and grounded perspectives on the diverse ways race, ethnicity, and culture are experienced, debated, and represented. All of the chapters contribute more broadly to writings on dual identities, and the various ways bicultural Africans/Blacks navigate their identities and their places in African and Diaspora communities.

Purchase the essay collection here.

Yelena Bailey