#i2amru (I, Too, Am Reinhardt) Volume 1 Number 1 | Page 16

I smiled. She smiled back and
then unscrewed the top of the
jar, releasing its content over the
plate and letting the powdered
sugar decorate the golden-brown
beignets. It fell in snowful, covering everything on the plate until
they scintillated.

If a single word in
the English language
were to come close to
even describing
Vanessa Irie in full, it
would be “focused.”

I reached for a beignet. Aunt
Jeannine stopped me.
“Promise me.” Her face assumed
a different quality then. Her eyes
grew softer and it seemed like all
the light in the world had come
to gather behind her pupils, so
shiny were they.

Vanessa Irie is set to graduate
magna cum laude with double
degrees in Sociology and Global
Communication. Though she has
an older sister who has obtained
a Master’s degree and is working
on a PhD in the Ivory Coast, Irie
still