What's The Difference?

Shamayne Braman was born in Guyana and immigrated to the United States with her mom and extended family when she was four years old. She lived in an urban center, just outside of Newark New Jersey, where the educational outcomes for students in the school district were bleak. In 6th grade, Shamayne earned a full scholarship to a prestigious private school three towns away, where the communities, teachers, and students differed from me racially and socio-economically. That same year, her mother suffered a massive stroke. The combination of these events at the same time in her life shaped her understanding of inequity as well as a racial and cultural difference. It also taught her two important skills how to maintain her authenticity among very different social contexts and how to keep pushing when faced with an extreme challenge in her case keeping up her grades while watching her mother lose her ability to speak, write, walk, and otherwise live the healthy normal life that shed lived previously. After graduat