Oh, To Be A Black Woman In America. When I Entered College

Oh, to be a Black woman in America. When I entered college my interest consistently gravitated into the African American courses, since I wanted to learn more about my ancestors and my cultural history. The course name alone completely captured my attention and I could not pass up the option for this to be one of my elective classes this semester. Prior to this course, I had not taken a class that was centered around my gender or race. Therefore, I had hoped to learn more about the internal and external challenges of being a Black woman in America. Throughout weeks of captivating classroom lectures, intense readings, and additional coursework this class has surpassed my expectations, and I am not the same young woman that I was when this†¦show more content†¦Contrastingly, I did not have that same impactful experience when we covered Shapeshifters by Aimee Meredith Cox. Shapeshifters was introduced towards the end of the semester although, I understood Cox’s central c laim, I had difficulty correlating the individualistic stories of the women in the Fresh Start program to the overall purpose of the book. Class discussions helped slightly, but we did not have the opportunity to thoroughly examine the detailed stores in class, therefore I was slightly confused on most of Cox’s philosophies. I believe the confusion stemmed from the short amount of time that we spent on discussing Shapeshifters in class. Therefore, most of the theories seemed like a blur, and to fully retain the important points presented in Shapeshifters I would need to reread the book on my own time to fully understand the content. Nevertheless, I learned a massive amount of critical information in this class. Beforehand, I was slightly acquainted with problems pertaining to being Black and on being a Woman. Yet, I never thought about how the two can be interrelated. 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