Seeing Myself Through the Wild Fire

Abstract

Rowe (2022) stated, “Perhaps a specific challenge for the advancement of Black women in higher education is correlated to how Black women are understood and assessed based on hair and hair texture” (p. 32). While higher education is often viewed as an institution to acquire new knowledge and understanding, cultivating a space of diversity and equality, the author's personal experience and the stories of other women in Rowe's article highlight the discrimination that exists while employed in higher education. In utilizing the conceptual framework of intersectionality, this chapter recounts the lived experience of a Black woman's struggle with unacceptance in higher education while pursuing her own self-acceptance. It tells the story of how her hair journey was one of the conflicting feelings of much pain, especially when the choice to go natural was not chosen by the one who had to represent it.