Tochukwu Awachie (they/them) is a queer and trans-genderfluid child of Nigerian immigrants who grew up on land stolen from Mvskoke and Aniyvwiyaʔi nations (metroAtlanta, GA). Their identities and innovations are informed by experiences of neurodiversity, chronic illness, and racial, sexual, and gendered violence. In personal and professional life, they are invested in the artistic, relational, radical, and metaphysical approaches to wellness that global Black cultures have cultivated for generations. Their investment in Black healing and liberation centers those most marginalized and manifests through culturally-rooted psychology praxis, interdisciplinary research, community wisdom-building, and spiritual care.
Tochukwu’s work honors Black emotion — from debilitating grief to righteous rage to transcendent joy — and Black bodies — fat, dark-skinned, disabled, gender-expansive — as integral to transforming external and internalized systems of Black oppression.
As a psychologist-in-training, Tochukwu aims to contribute to the radical school of Black psychology, which deconstructs and decenters white, EuroAmerican cultural and intellectual hegemony and nurtures Black wellness through the indigenous wisdom traditions. As a community member, care provider, artist, and advocate they uplift legacies of Black resistance music, magic, and movements as sacred anchors of their scholarship as well as their embodied philosophies.
