Proud Black Nerdette

As an army brat I moved a lot as a child.  When you spend a lot of time as the new kid in school you come up with ways to cope.  For me, my safe haven at every new school was the library.  It was not  only consistently a safe place to study, it was a gateway to other worlds.  There I became a fan of science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, history and science.

I've always loved to learn so I was an A student and teacher's pet which really made me popular (not!).  I'm not going to tell my age, but devaluing education was just as much a part of our culture then as it is now.  By my senior year of high school, I no longer cared about fitting in and decided that education and technology were my tickets out of bitter city. 

Bitter city is not a place, it is a state of mind that I believe holds us back as a people.  Those who don't like the cards life has dealt them and are too bitter to ask for help or find ways to lift themselves up, so they try to hold down the rest of us by dissing intelligence or the use of proper English.  Crabs in a barrel.  Still, I love all of my people and one of my goals in life is to find a way to make being a nerd cool for the next generation. 

In my spare time I write, work on digital art projects, watch and read sci fi, build websites for family and friends (focusing on getting my own site up now), capture the world with my camera and spend quality time with my man, a fellow Black nerd (whom I met via technology, naturally).

I'm glad I stumbled upon this group.  For years I was often one of a few, if not the only Black woman at tech, sci fi and comic book conventions but that has begun to change.  I've been looking for a way to connect with other Black geeks and I was pleasantly surprised to find out about the Black Nerds Network after watching Brooklyn Boheme on Showtime this month.  I'm looking forward to learning and growing with you.