I am a Ghanaian American, first-generation college student and a soon-to-be Master of Architecture graduate from Morgan State University, where I also earned my undergraduate degree in Architecture & Environmental Design. My academic work explores architecture as a tool for cultural memory, environmental justice, and collective healing, with a particular focus on Black relationships to water. My thesis, Refusing to Sink: Reimagining Black Bodies and Water, emerged from my lived experience navigating multiple Black identities. Growing up, I noticed that my Ghanaian family members and people I know from Ghana and Nigeria often hold a fundamentally different relationship to water and aquatic spaces than many of my Black American peers—one shaped by familiarity, cultural continuity, and inherited knowledge rather than fear or exclusion. Existing between these experiences prompted me to question how history, displacement, and systemic racism have reshaped Black relationships to water in the United States. Through architectural research, cultural analysis, and speculative design, my work investigates how the built environment can confront this history and reclaim water as a space of safety, joy, and belonging for Black communities.