Photo credit: Cicely Blain

Amarachi and Involvement

Amarachi Chukwu is a third year Arts student majoring in Psychology with a minor in Law and Society. She also loves Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice. At UBC, she is the President of the Caribbean African Association and the the Co-captain of Nu Era Dance Crew. In her spare time, Amarachi enjoys having great conversations with people, dancing, watching a lot of television shows, singing, DIY projects, eating, and spending time with close friends.

Amarachi and Passions

Amarachi is passionate about music, dance, fashion, and other art forms that allow for expression of self and beliefs. She’s passionate about her faith as a Christian as well as social justice, equality, and learning. As a feminist, Amarachi is also passionate about the narrow definitions of beauty and the homogenous construction of femininity. She believes that both ideas exclude so many women, especially women of colour. These socially constructed ideas of what it is to be ‘women’ belittle those who do not adhere to them and fail to celebrate the diversity in expressions of gender or beauty.

Amarachi and International Women’s Day

This year on International Women’s Day, Amarachi is celebrating her mother, her sister, and her girl-friends. “I am lucky to have so many strong, intelligent and beautiful women in my life who continuously help me grow,” she says. For her, female empowerment means having the agency and ability to define for ourselves and what it means to be women and not having our identities essentialised to a single narrative like ‘emotional’ or ‘nurturing’. Female empowerment means having our identities no longer co-constructed or dependent upon male identity as a polar opposite: gentle to his aggressive, frail to his strength, emotional to his rational.