Rachel Aghanwa, a student at Queens Gateway Health Science Secondary School, has been a Girls Write Now mentee for one year alongside her mentor Sara Polsky. This piece originally appeared in “Voice to Voice: Girls Write Now’s 2015 Anthology.”
It was always hard for Girls Write Now teen Rachel Aghanwa to write about her race but then an ad she saw while traveling in Nigeria made her realize she should see herself as a blessing, instead of a curse.