Boston feels brilliant but not always soulful. It’s a city that knows how to think but rarely how to feel. Walking its streets, I could sense how intellect is currency—how tone, posture, and conversation are all designed to affirm a certain kind of whiteness. It’s beautiful, yes, but also cold. Thoughtful but not tender. I came here expecting inspiration, not initiation. But Boston became both. I’ve learned that intellect without soul isn’t wisdom. Some people can talk about

This piece is both research and revelation. It explores how we, as Black women and seekers, can reclaim our ways of knowing from colonial frameworks and return to the sacred wisdom of the body, spirit, and community.   It’s a call to remember that decolonization begins within—through alignment, truth-telling, and healing. , and healing.   Zariah N. Perkins   Abstract This article introduces an emerging epistemological framework—Endarkened Africana Womanist Epistemology—that d

Mixing his Nigerian village upbringing with his first American experience at Tufts and living in Boston created a man who could never fully understand or appreciate my soul, because he has no access to his own. He was raised on resilience, not rest. Conditioned to achieve, not to feel. A man I deeply loved became the embodiment of this. His archetype is the kind that lives entirely in the mind because the soul never had space to breathe. He moves through life with an intellec