For Jess Boakye, her childhood was an invariable mix of a typical African-American experience and a traditional Ghanaian upbringing. Born and raised in New Jersey, in the United States, Boakye always felt proud of her black skin and her Ghanaian heritage. Traversing this path all throughout her life, in high school Boakye became the president of the African Heritage Club.
Wanting to leave her mark on the predominantly white school, she decided to create a line of T-shirts which would honour the diasporic faces of her organisation. “I felt like the club was just taken as a joke, and people who weren’t in it and weren’t people of colour, were just taking us a little too lightly,” she explained. “So I vowed that in my senior year, which was 2017-2018, I would try to leave my mark on the club.
” Centring the concept of being seen as a group of unique and diverse students ready to make a difference, Boakye began the tug of war to get her design created. Though her first design was rejected by the school for the radical inclusion of the Black Power fist, her next design conveyed the same strong message. “The original design that I had, [featured] a quote on the back about black pride by Taryn Finley, and then the front said ‘for the culture’, and then the sleeves consisted of 16 African and Caribbean flags that were members of the club.
It begins with Ghana and Jamaica because my best friend, who’s Jamaican, was the one that was encouraging me.” Getting rave re.
