Q&A with Dr. Alicia Smith-Tran

In her Winter 2024 Contexts feature, “Pushing Back on ‘Black Don’t Crack,’” Dr. Alicia Smith-Tran explores the ways age, gender, and race intersect to produce unique binds—and additional unseen labor—for professional Black women. “I think the broader public certainly thinks of looking youthful as the ideal,” she explains, but that’s not always the case, “depending on who you are and how you present to the world.”