KHALILAH ALI

Khalilah Ali received her B.A. in Literature and her M.Ed. in English Education from Georgia State University. Realizing that education can come from both inside and outside the classroom, Khalilah has been dedicated to ensuring that her students' education comes in a multitude of forms including literature, history, and music. Her primary interest is multicultural education, but she also has a particular interest in mentoring girls and has worked with NSAA (from the Adinkra symbol representing "excellence" of workmanship) a youth rites of passage program. Khalilah has taught in a variety of academic environments— as a literature and language arts teacher in Dekalb County, Georgia; with GSU's Post Secondary Readiness Enrichment program (PREP); with KUMON U.S.A as the Japanese based program's center instructor for reading; and at the University of Rhode Island as a research assistant. Khalilah has received commendations and awards, including a Ford Fellowship and Mellon Minority Undergraduate Fellowship. As a child of the hip-hop generation and self-proclaimed "conscious lyricist," she also works with poets, musicians and emcees in several projects designed to expose positive hip-hop to a wider audience. Khalilah's academic research at Emory University as a Doctoral candidate in Critical Race Feminism and Postcolonial studies allows her to envision a world that deals with the effects of hegemony and how dealing with that inequity can help devise steps to afford all the world's children an equal playing field. "Until the lions have their own historian, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter." ~ Kenyan Proverb