It was kind of this way until about fifth grade when my parents made the decision to move me back to
New Orleans. They were dealing with some legal stuff at the time and thought at that time it was better
for me to just go back to New Orleans, go back to the Ninth Ward, and live with my grandmother. For
the next four years, I lived with my grandmother. It was her, it was several of my cousins, and we lived in
the home that my mom and her siblings grew up in. It was my grandmother, it was several of my cousins
that lived there, several of my aunts, so we were all just under the same roof. We didn't have a lot of
space. We didn't have any money, but we had something that was far more valuable. We had my
grandmother's love and we had my grandmother's guidance. She was incredibly hard on us. She made
sure that we worked hard, that we did well in school. She made sure that we respected adults and
respected our teachers.
She also made sure that we contributed to the household. We had chores that we had to do, we had to
cook, we had to clean. No one got to live there for free. Everyone had a role to play and everyone had to
contribute in a way that allowed us to have a successful and functioning household. That's probably the
best way to describe it. My grandmother also taught us the importance of being independent. So as
kids, even as young as fifth grade, sixth grade, seventh grade, if we wanted to buy something, then we
couldn't go and ask her for money. We actually had to go out and earn the money. So, what one of my
older cousins and I would do, is we would often mow lawns. We would go around the neighborhood
dragging a lawn mower through the Ninth Ward in the hot, blistering, humid summertime, and we
would just knock on doors and ask the neighbors if we could mow their lawn for a couple bucks.
Eventually we would get enough people to say yes where we would get a few bucks and that allowed us
to go and buy whatever it is that we wanted to get.
My grandmother also really instilled the importance of being resourceful. In some ways it was about
being entrepreneurial, which is interesting because these are values that are prioritized in the academy.
At the time, obviously, I didn't know that I would eventually become a university professor and I would
have to rely on a lot of these same values and these experiences would shape and have some impact on
my work today, all these years later.
But even in terms of being resourceful and being independent, if you wanted to go somewhere, if you
wanted to go to the mall, if you wanted to go to the movies, we had to find a way to get there. Usually
that meant public transportation. Those four years, from the time I was about nine or 10 years old, until
my early teenage years, until I was about 13, really had an impact on my identity and who I was.
Also, at the time, just thinking about my schooling experience living in the Ninth Ward, and how it was
vastly different from my experience in Los Angeles. In the Ninth Ward, first of all, everyone went to the
same school, the whole community did, and all the public-school teachers were Black and all of the
students were Black. I mean every single person, the administration, the teachers, the students, I mean
it was pretty much an exclusively Black space. That was in elementary school and in middle school
actually. Many of the school teachers there had been teaching in the community for 15-20 years,
sometimes longer, so some of these same teachers were the teachers that they had, in some cases, my
parents in classes, or my aunts and my uncles. So, there was this sort of kinship and this shared
connection. Every teacher knew every kid's family, knew their siblings, and had some connection beyond
the fact that they were just students in their classroom.