User:IdRatherBeAtTheBeach/Kiyémis

Kiyémis is an Afro-feminist blogger, author and activist, committed to fighting sexism, racism and the social stigma of obesity. She is considered a figure of French afro-feminism.

Her pseudonym "Kiyémis" is the contraction of the first names of her mother and grandmother.

Biography
Born near Paris, she grew up between Bobigny and Paris. Originally from Cameroon, her parents are middle class: her father is an accountant and her mother is a steward. She has a twin brother. She began writing at the age of eight. When she was thirteen, her family moved from the Seine-Saint-Denis to Seine-et-Marne.

The 2005 French riots accelerated her political awakening because she did not recognize the media portrayal of where she grew up. Four years later, her Afro-feminist sensibility awakened after her brother explained to her that he was checked up to seven times a day, an experience that his white friends did not experience.

In 2012, along with attaining her history degree, she launched her Twitter account, where she developed her thinking at the crossroads of feminism, anti-racism and the fight against the social stigma of obesity. At the end of 2014, she started her blog entitled The Kiyémis Chatter: An Afropean Who Makes Noise, where she shares her readings, her reflections on life and her political opinions. She uses the term Afropean because it allows her to designate her entire identity: both French and part of the African diaspora. She advocates the institutionalization in academia of Afro-feminist web content, in order to ensure better recognition of the women who create it.

In 2017, she enrolled in a master's degree in history and political science at the University of Vincennes in Saint-Denis. She participated in the Amandine Gay documentary, Ouvrir la voix, which collects testimonies of black French women to highlight their journey.

Inspired by the writings of Maya Angelou, Audre Lorde and Leonora Miano, she published her first collection of poems, À nos humanités révoltées, on March 22, 2018. The twenty poems that compose the book tell of migration, memory, racism, unknown languages, sisterhood, militancy, Afro-feminism etc. She uses inclusive writing in her book On her blog, she also cites as a reference the American Afro-feminist intellectual Bell Hooks

Originally from Paris, she resided in Lyon in 2018.