Mandou Billye Sankofa Waters
My name translates to Queen Mother, Warrior. Go back and retrieve what is useful through heaven and earth. I am daughter of Mary & Bill; a Hip Hop generation Blackgirl from Chicago within a vastIy rich Village of folx who uses several modalities with folx to co-construct, embody, and share knowledges. We center narratives of the Black Diapora to move further into God & liberation.
proprietor
writer
Beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.
– bell hooks (1952 – 2021)
discussions
Select Discussions
Go Back and Get It 🗝✨
The Future of The Movement w/Patrisse Cullors, M. Billye Sankofa Waters and Ashanté Samuels
UWT Coalition Building for Racial Justice Series - Feb 4th
professional bio
M. Billye Sankofa Waters, Ph.D. – daughter of Mary and Bill – is a Hip Hop generation Blackgirl from Chicago who uses several modalities with folx to co-construct, embody, and share knowledges. She has 20+ professional years in various capacities as a writer/journalist, educator, artist; her work is grounded in Black storytelling, qualitative methods, liberatory education, Black feminism and critical race theory. She is creator of the brand #BlackFolxAreRich and currently an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Washington Tacoma.
Sankofa Waters is the author of "Penetrated Soul," "We Can Speak for Ourselves: Parent Involvement and Ideologies of Black Mothers in Chicago"; co-editor of the Lauryn Hill Reader w/ Bettina L. Love and Venus Evans-Winters (2019) and How We Got Here: The Role of Critical Mentoring and Social Justice Praxis w/ the late Marta Sánchez (2020.)
Since 1995, she has crafted her skills as a writer / journalist and has been invited to interview folx across disciplines such as Quincy Jones, Patrisse Cullors, and Nikki Giovanni. During her time at Columbia College Chicago, she was formally trained as a Fiction Writing coach, earning her BA in Fiction Writing and was the first graduate of the Black World Studies program. While earning her MA and Ph.D. in Education from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (2012), she became an Academic Writing Coach through the UNC Writing Center. She has developed two workshops that focus on voice, positionality, criticality, and responsibilities in academic writing.
Sankofa Waters is creator of the brand #BlackFolxAreRich®, the #BFAR Storytellers Deck, Storytellers Retreat, and the family archival Journey Books. She is Founding Executive Director of the non-profit Blackgirl Unapologetic, Inc (BGU). BGU provides funds for Blackgirls who are undergraduate, graduate students, other/mothers and community servants) #BeAResource. She is President of Radical Identity Praxis, LLC (RIP) – the parent corporation of #BFAR and BGU. RIP focuses on research, events, merchandising, and charity.