The educational narrative of Leonie C.R. Smith displays the story of a young Antiguan girl and the social and academic barriers she overcomes throughout her lifetime. Both her mother and her father taught her about the importance of education and she did exceptionally well in the Antiguan School system as a student in “A classes.” After losing her mother at a young age and also dealing with the devastation of a Fire, Smith moved to New York to live with her older sister. Immediately the school system in New York as well as her peers rejected her learning style and physical appearance. Smith’s intelligence was underestimated being that she was not only a foreigner but a young black female. She was ignorantly placed into classes of lower academic standing just as many African American Students are in America today because of the notion that the African American community as a whole is not expected to succeed. However remarkably, these typical setbacks did not interfere with Smith’s motivation to excel academically and left her temporarily unmarred and ready to succeed. Yet soon after graduating high school and now a college freshman at Hamilton College, she was not accepted in the predominately white community. She suffered emotionally and began to realize that “the path to acquiring an education and advanced academic literacy is fraught with difficulty, and opening the door to success comes with a price (smith).”
Despite the fact that receiving the proper education can be difficult when you are of African descent, it is important to have the strength and will power to overcome the obstacles laid before you. My parents worked to instill that mindset in me just as Smith’s even if I was the only or one of three black kids in my honors classes and I too “felt compelled to represent black people or make sure we were not being misrepresented,” by taking advantage of every opportunity that came my way. The African American community and African American women specifically have to come to the realization that literacy is the key to success and regardless of what others do we have to stick with our goals in order for them to be accomplished and allow no one to get in the way of our success.

-Saba Tesfamariam