Published in 2019
256 pages
Chelsea Kwakye is a first-class honors History graduate from Cambridge, where she was the only black girl in her year to read History. In her final year, she was Vice-President of the African-Caribbean Society. She is currently studying at the University of Law in preparation for a training contract with a London law firm.
Ore Ogunbiyi is a Politics and International Relations graduate from Cambridge, where she was President of the university’s African-Caribbean Society. She is currently getting her Master’s in Journalism at Columbia University, New York
What is this book about?
As a minority in a predominantly white institution, taking up space is an act of resistance. Recent Cambridge grads Chelsea and Ore experienced this first-hand, and wrote Taking Up Space as a guide and a manifesto for change.
FOR BLACK GIRLS:
Understand that your journey is unique. Use this book as a guide. Our wish for you is that you read this and feel empowered, comforted and validated in every emotion you experience, or decision that you make.
FOR EVERYONE ELSE:
We can only hope that reading this helps you to be a better friend, parent, sibling or teacher to black girls living through what we did. It’s time we stepped away from seeing this as a problem that black people are charged with solving on their own.
It’s a collective effort.
And everyone has a role to play.
Featuring honest conversations with students past and present, Taking Up Space goes beyond the buzzwords of diversity and inclusion and explores what those words truly mean for young black girls today.
