In the last year, I have been constructing “The Black Barbie Timeline”, which is a chronological ordering of Black Barbies and the different forms, roles, titles, and occupations these dolls occupy historically and presently. As a living document, the timeline illustrates the evolution of the Black Barbie as a doll emblematic of Black femininity and girlhood, alongside the progression of Black citizenship and thought. My findings frame the embodiment, exclusion, and inclusion of Blackness within American objects, social settings, and childhood. The Black Barbie Timeline branched off a larger project, founded in Taught by Literature, in the name of reclamation and reestablishment of Black Women Intellectuals. Before I came to know of the influential figures that shaped Black Women’s Literature, their stories, and the ones they continue to tell, I knew of my mom. Every Christmas, from when I was young enough to remember, she searched everywhere across New Jersey to get all three of her daughters' Black dolls. It became a luxury for me, even a privilege in some respects. Building the timeline is my reclamation—that of my mother and hers before who could not afford one. Taught By Literature has allowed me to tell my story and refigure myself within that of other Black Women. In my Research Fellow role, my successes have stemmed from essential skills, including administrative support and record updating, some of which I have developed through years of academic assistance and community service. My community service program specialized in serving food at nearby churches and tutoring children at an elementary school in a neighboring town. I also worked as an unofficial teaching assistant for my mother, a mathematics coach at Newark Public Schools, and taught a class on academic preparation for high school. Working to enhance my collaboration abilities has allowed me to ground myself through critical thinking and leadership. In high school, I spearheaded reform on how to respond to hate crimes within the community. As President of the Black Student Coalition, I collaborated with the administration to create a system that prioritized the rehabilitation of victims and offenders. While creating a platform of expression for the victim, to the extent of which they felt safe, educating the offender, and informing the community of its frequency and intensity, we worked to create strength among all at a PWI. During my junior year, I assisted in coordinating a survey among students of color about their experiences, which I later implemented regularly as an alliance leader. Following the murder of George Floyd, I was invited to work with an outsourced psychologist who specialized in the enforcement of DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion, to implement more informal ways of addressing racism. My activism, community service, and outreach, before I arrived at Villanova have been essential in forming who I am today. I aspire to enter an anthropology doctorate program out of graduation because it is a culmination of the skills I have been forming for years. My growth as an academic, sister, daughter, and woman stems from those trips with my mom to find Black dolls. It was furthered when I took the role of guiding many students at her school and was defined by learning to advocate for myself and my community in her image. I have to opportunity in my research to imbue my work with unapologetic, generational Blackness—which is more important than any award or achievement.

As children, my sisters and I had an awareness that although our mom belonged to us, she belonged to other people too. She belonged to my grandparents, to the New Jersey education system, to her church, and my dad, at one time or another. Single parents are stigmatized because they are a reminder of two things: loneliness and society’s shortcomings. Most people confuse the act of being alone with loneliness because though the definitions are different, they manifest similarly in life. Everyone at some point in their lives has experienced loneliness. Single parents are seen as people who suffer from loneliness and unlike others, they have a permanent token of said perceived loneliness— children. Their loneliness is public. Despite having the utmost love for their children, the sheer “ugliness” of doing something as important as raising a child alone discomforts the average person and family. Furthermore, this discomfort is equated with failure to keep a family whole, consequently leading to instances of victim-blaming. If there were a small percentage of American people who identified as single parents, then the reasons would be summed up as random and unfortunate events. Single parents are common, especially in ethnic and racial enclaves. Even when the “phenomena” of single-parent households are deduced to cultural differences this conclusion is insufficient. The burden of failure is shared, though not equally, among single parents and society. These connotations of ugliness and inefficiency tarnish the functionality of American society. Single parents and their children are tokens of failure for the American public. This is undeniable because the presence of single parents is concurrent with public policy and works: welfare, childcare, healthcare, minimum wage, affordable housing, transportation, etc. For these reasons, it is not simply plausible, but easy to stigmatize single parents and use them as scapegoats for all that is wrong, backward, and problematic in society. I want to pursue a career that studies this line of thought. With this scholarship, I will continue my education in English, History, Africana Studies, and Peace and Justice Studies to investigate the ways that Black people and Black bodies are politicized in different forms of literature and media. I have hopes of majoring in Anthropology at a doctorate program of my choice following graduation. Much of the work I have done in undergraduate research has indicated that the only way for us to eliminate these stereotypes of single parents is to humanize them. The pathway to doing so lies in revising public policy to benefit single parents rather than being made with the intent to eradicate their existence. Improving accessibility takes the form of many things, but some include the following: standardizing free childcare, improving public transportation (schedules, automobiles, and areas/neighborhoods), either an increase of the federal and state minimum wage or welfare checks that cover food, housing, and/or school costs, free breakfast and lunches for all children in school, free healthcare for single parents and their children, more affordable housing options in non-urban areas, student loan forgiveness, unemployment checks following maternity or paternity leave, etc. If I’ve learned anything from my childhood, it is this: you do not own people, but you do own and share experiences with them. Single parents epitomize this notion, survive on it, and persist because of it. They share their children with other trusted adults and children. They share their love and care, fully and strategically. They have no choice but to rely on these measures of experience to live and guarantee their children’s survival. My education has encouraged me to reify these tactics and centralize them in Black spaces and lives.