“I basically was a professional teenage girl.”

Fatimata Cham, 19, grew up organizing around education inequality in the South Bronx, and wishes people discussed childhood more, “especially those who live in BIPOC communities who have to do this work in order to survive,” she says. Thinking back to the Sandy Hook shooting, she tells Teen Vogue, most of Gen Z experienced childhood by having to learn how to advocate for themselves and feeling the burden of solving problems that feel impossibly large. Cham says that as a Black person living in America, she hears a lot about Black trauma and little about Black joy. “I think it took a lot of unlearning for me to understand that, yes, [activism] is a huge part of my identity, but it shouldn’t be the only source of my happiness, [or] the only source of showing up for myself.”

Continue reading at this link