Welcome to The Nerdy Black Girl

My dear fellow nerd,

On good days and bad days, but on bad days especially I turn into the 3rd grade version of me sitting at the lunch table with a library book in one hand and a juice box in the other, explaining the mathematical orders of operation to nobody in particular. She was not popular, and, she was not trying to be. She was, however, having the time of her life.

Unfortunately, I lost her for a while.

Somewhere between taking my MCAT, seeing patients, paying Boston rent, and the oil I burned at midnight to make my resume as long as possible, the girl with the library book disappeared. Not because she stopped loving any of the things mentioned. Rather, nobody around her had the bandwidth to hear a four-thousand-word answer to "how was your day." Because being smart had become a tool for survival, instead of a joy to share. Because the very same institutions that credentialed me also taught me to keep my obsessions (or rather myself) small, my references palatable, and my enthusiasm strictly professional.

The lesson I learned was that the professional voice is a beautiful prison.

This newsletter is me letting her out. It is also my way of giving you the key to release yours too.

The Nerdy Black Girl is a weekly love letter to the woman inside you who wants to know things just because. The one who reads four books at once and finishes none of them and is somehow more whole for it. The one who saves articles, screenshots paintings, lingers on newsletters at midnight, and keeps a private list of bookstores she wants to visit in cities she has not yet been to. The one who has never been bored a day in her life because there is too much world.

It is she is I am writing to. It is she I am writing as. And it is she is whom I think you are, too

Every week, you will get this love letter in a package with three pieces:

A woman worth knowing: a scientist, a writer, an artist, a healer, a historian, a worldbuilder. Some you will have heard of. Most you will not. All of them deserve to be heard.

A place worth going: a museum, a bookstore, a salon, a city block, a garden, a corner of the internet. Somewhere I think the nerdy girl inside you would want to wander.

A find worth showing: a book, an essay, an exhibit, an idea, a recipe, a piece of language, a song, a footnote that sparked your imagination. The kind of thing you want to text a friend about before you have even finished it.

I have built this whole newsletter around curiosity is as a birthright that we were trained to ration instead of enjoying as a luxury.

We were taught to be useful, marketable, palatable, productive and somewhere in the middle of all that earning, we were asked to exchange the part of ourselves that had the audacity to nerd all the way out.

I am writing this to take those parts of ourselves back.

So. Pull up a chair. Stay for the beautiful project of falling back in love with what you love in good company, with women who still believe wandering counts.

I am so glad you are here.

— Britney