Chamara Jewel Kwakye is a daughter, writer, storylistener, storyteller, autoethnographer, and performer. She holds a doctorate in Education Policy, Organization and Leadership from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. Her research interests include womanism, higher education policy, Black women and girls, life history methods, and performance studies. Dr. Kwakye is an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky in the Gender and Women's Studies and African American and Africana Studies departments. Along with Dr. Ruth Nicole Brown, Dr. Kwakye is a co-editor of Wish To Live: The Hip-Hop Feminist Pedagogy Reader (Peter Lang, 2012).