I am MALAYKA NEITH. I am a being of love, a vessel of healing, truth-seeking, justice speaking agent of peace. I am the daughter of Chilean love birthed on Santa Barbara shores, a gift for my father the last year of his PhD.
I am the daughter of strong exiled educators, innovators and creators of hope in the unseen. I am the people united chanting never defeated. A dream of pueblo unido fueling my vision for the journey unfolding in many states, countries, spaces and faces of me.
“As a child I felt more connected to the moon, the stars and seas, much more than to any flag or nation yearning to reconnect with my true home yet unknown.”
A dedicated student of life, I spent my youth adventuring, taking risks, exploring the depth of self, traveling, peopling and forging a way from Chile back to the States at 18. With a one-way ticket, $300, and a heart full of educational dreams I began my pursuit of self.
Forced to see self through the eyes of others I questioned what I never had before, noticing a color to my skin, learning misperceptions about me, the collective we. For the first time I was denied entry, not access, to a world of pre-med by the sewing of thought seeds not my own. Determined to serve and help others, inspired by my brother’s journey, I found alternate routes to fulfilling this dream. Education found its way to my heart and the classroom became the home I had been seeking. It is the space of intentional human interaction, connection, and community building that I re-found my sense of self, and the wealth of funds of knowledge I had to offer. A thirst for knowledge and information of African culture, always present in my youth, an adoration for Egypt, reemerged.
Afro-Chilena is what I asked my community to call me, clear on a cellular level of my ancestral connection. From cornfields to a nation capital, pursuing educational dreams while teaching all pre-K-12 levels, learning more about me than my children could see.
Howard U., you know me, in the streets of SE DC, the woman I’ve come to adore was forged, burned and re-born in her own ashes. Unveiling the layers of my depth during a mandated healing journey, spirit spoke awakening my highest self.
“Reborn in the waters of the Nile, I knew I was home and whole. A healing journey culmination on Kemet, some call Egypt.”
Sankofa remembrance, I am reclaimed, an ever evolving being of love. A spiritual healer, I RESILIENT. A persistent seeker of social justice committed to developing a tribe.
Storyteller Malayka Neith did not provide a biography.
