“It’s really important for me to help with healing on a personal
level, as a physician, but also at the community and structural levels
as a researcher and activist. My uncle, a doctor in rural Eritrea for
more than 20 years, taught me well,” she said.
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/03/profile-amanuel/
Coming of age, setting a goal
Hanna Amanuel ’16, child of Eritrean immigrants, plans to help others
as she was once helped
March 30, 2016 | Editor's Pick
By Meg Murphy, Harvard Correspondent
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This is one in a series of profiles showcasing some of Harvard’s
stellar graduates.
Hanna Amanuel ’16 knows something about dignity. Even as a child in
the Bronx, she saw it in places where others might not: in the bravery
of new immigrants, in the potential of the low-income grade schoolers
around her, and in her mother, a proud woman from the Horn of Africa.
Amanuel will graduate from Harvard College in May. With her sharp
intelligence, a fresh degree and the future that it implies might seem
like a given — an accomplishment, but not an unusual one. That is not
the case. She got to this point, she says, because mentors of color
drew her onto a path that included competitive private schools, role
models, and the reassurance that she could succeed.
She had not been given a chance to excel as a child attending public
schools in the Bronx. Her parents had moved from Eritrea, a troubled
postwar country in East Africa, and were getting by without a command
of the language or many financial resources. In fourth grade, children
were tracked into either an honors or average level. The first group
was nearly all white and Asian students, and the latter nearly all
black and Latino. Despite having skipped a grade, Amanuel was denied a
spot in the honors class.
Racial disparities were clear to Amanuel even then, but the
prejudicial structures beneath them were not. “As a child, I wasn’t
aware of why it was that way. But I definitely felt like I wasn’t
supported. I felt like the school didn’t see potential in me,” Amanuel
says. “I did not imagine that I might go to a school like Harvard.”
Fortunately, she was noticed by Prep for Prep, a leadership and
academic development program in New York City that offers promising
students of color access to greater opportunities. With their
assistance, and the steady guidance of supportive parents, she went on
to attend a top private high school, Trinity School.
“I think that’s when I first started seeing myself as someone who
could reach these high places,” she said, and that feeling was
heightened when she visited Harvard on a college tour. She was hosted
by a Nigerian student, a graduating senior with a connection to Prep
for Prep. “She was super chill and very smart and also, like me, an
African woman. She made me feel comfortable and like maybe I could do
well here, too.”
Amanuel, who is on the pre-medicine track studying social anthropology
and global health and health policy, focused her senior thesis on the
national campaign against female genital cutting in Eritrea. Thanks to
funding from Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
and the Center for African Studies, she spent several months last year
doing fieldwork in Africa. She interviewed anti-cutting campaigners
and women in Asmara, the capital city, and villagers and medical
professionals in rural areas outside of the capital.
Her interest focuses on the experiences of women who, like her own
close relatives, have undergone genital cutting, many of them as
babies, and moved forward with their lives. These dignified African
women do not define themselves around this singular practice but hear
constantly that they are “victims.”
“My project arose from a lot of what I have witnessed among women in
my family … They feel a measure of discomfort with the ways in which
their bodies are viewed by physicians and by people in general. Female
genital cutting is often called ‘female genital mutilation’ and gets
cast as this sort of ‘barbaric’ African practice. I think that my
thesis emerged from a desire to look at the multiplicity of Eritrean
women — to deconstruct a lot of the understanding that people have of
this practice and of Africa.”
After graduation, Amanuel is heading to Oxford University on a
Harvard-UK Fellowship. She thinks she’ll take African studies. She
intends eventually to become an obstetrician-gynecologist and maternal
health advocate in the Horn of Africa. She wants to improve access to
quality reproductive health care, to foster an environment in which
African women are treated with dignity and are encouraged to seek out
medical care.
“It’s really important for me to help with healing on a personal
level, as a physician, but also at the community and structural levels
as a researcher and activist. My uncle, a doctor in rural Eritrea for
more than 20 years, taught me well,” she said.
This spring, Amanuel has hosted high school students on a Harvard
tour. They are women of color, veterans of Prep for Prep.
“My advice to people, especially women of color from working-class
backgrounds like mine, is don’t get discouraged. If at first you feel
out of place and struggle to find community, don’t lose heart. You
deserve to be here.”
Received on Wed Mar 30 2016 - 13:00:45 EDT