What's in a Name?

Imani Carmichael

Imani Carmichael- Italian/Scottish (mother); Afro-Trinidadian (father); Imani is an athletic girl who Daniela Nichols meets during her time at Northeastern University, and she participates on the college's basketball and track teams. A self-declared lesbian of mixed black and white ancestry, she wears glasses and appears racially ambiguous, with tightly curled dark brown hair that reaches her upper back and is sometimes tied in a low ponytail, downturned brown eyes, thin lips, and a light brown skin tone. Her face is oval-shaped with a slightly recessed chin, making her appear slightly younger than her actual age, yet she is relatively tall in stature at 5 ft 7 in, with a flat chest and limited curves. She is said to have a remarkable resemblance to her older sister Dominique, an alumnus of Northeastern University whom is 5 years her senior and works as a management analyst in Boston. Imani tends to be guarded and reserved in disclosing details about herself when first interacting with people, being somewhat mistrustful and hesitant to open up. This is due to the trauma she has personally experienced in the past due to her homosexuality, but she is sociable and oftentimes friendly with those she meets upon warming up to them. She and Daniela met at the university's queer alliance group once she and her long-time friends and college roommates Bianca and Shelby decided to attend. Their bond was further solidified once they bonded over a group assignment in a freshman-level sociology course the two were taking together as a basic elective. Imani tended to dress androgynously from a young age and has always had a notable preference for wearing men's clothing, a fact Daniela noted when shopping with her one-on-one at the mall. She can also have a strong one-track mind and hidden motivation to pursue her ambitions and describes herself as a "Chapstick lesbian", with an androgynous, masculine energy about her. 

Her favorite foods are deep-dish mushroom and onion pizza, banana bread, and her grandma Vivian's homemade chocolate fondue, while her favorite drink is lemonade. She is best friends with a quirky Chinese-Jamaican girl named Chelsea Liu, as well as a young queer African American boy named Desmond King. Imani is likewise a huge fan of both the singer and rapper Lizzo and The Supremes, although she also listens to Katy Perry and a band called The Strokes. She can also have a tough, masculine energy about her, embodying many butch traits in her demeanor and serving as the "male component" of her queer relationships. She is very focused on developing a potential career as a professional basketball player, hoping to play for a women's team while pursuing a degree in Business Administration on the side. She remained in a committed relationship with a black classmate of Barbadian and Grenadian descent named Ebony Griffith, an education major who is known for her signature box braids and aspires to teach young people at elementary schools. Imani hopes to go into marketing and take on the business world as a Social Media Manager, but also claimed she would not mind working as a "video game tester" should this career path prove ineffective for her. She  is an amateur inventor who surprises people with her ingenious way of thinking and can be quite resourceful in times of difficulty. She reveals this upon joining a few of her classmates in hopes of preventing the campus' newspaper, The Bugle from being shut down. She keeps her thoughts in a multitude of journals and is an expert at making lists, and she prefers to lead an organized life, even going to the extent of color-coding her underwear. Imani uses her fame and power as an influencer to bring better awareness to marginalized groups of people who are largely misunderstood, such as those with autism spectrum disorder. 

At the age of two, she benched 100 pounds, or 45 kilograms for the very first time and became a big sister when her brother was born. When she was in daycare, she owned a pair of boxing gloves and competed and won against the other babies for a cookie during snack time. She once took a bath with her brother when they were little, as he was still a baby and she was around two or three years old. Imani shared a bunk with another 5th grade girl and was best friends with her, and she has a side to her that is very soft and physically affectionate. She shows no shame in using puppy eyes in order to get what she wants and is shown to ride on carts in the grocery store and wrecks several aisles. She is positive and likes to support her siblings, making them laugh and feel better, and she becomes her friend's inspiration for pursuing a life in the showbiz industry. She has on numerous occasions shown herself capable of acting serious and responsible however if the situation warrants. Imani frequently creates online reviews on the latest toys that have come out and uploads them onto YouTube to share with the world. She sometimes presents her stories in storyboard form as well, showing she has some knowledge of animation production and animatics. She is often energetic and passionate and expresses a love and zest for life, generally being unable to sit still for an extended period and constantly being on the move to try the next new thing. She similarly stood up to her the dean of her school known as PC Principal, who called her a "noisy chatterbox" and told her sharply that women should be seen and not heard. While Imani is sometimes being headstrong and stubborn, she has a sweet, outgoing, and joyful personality and tends to have an open mind.

Similarly to Julia's best friend Bianca Rutelli, she is secure in her own skin and does not care what other people think, feeling comfortable with her mixed heritage and multiracial identity as the daughter of a white woman and an Afro-Caribbean man. As a queer woman, she is highly broad-minded and tolerant of people from different backgrounds and identifies strongly with the queer community of color. She finds beauty in many forms and encourages confidence in herself and those with unique appearances, although Daniela and Ebony did not initially see eye to eye and had difficulty getting along. Imani has a diary which her cousin reads and could not eat corn at one point due to her braces, and she usually takes Christmas gift-giving seriously. She also wears three black bracelets on each of her wrists and a choker around her, in addition to wearing purple nail polish and having a purple Hawaiian shirt and matching shorts. She has a large family, but they are an extended family rather than an immediate family, and while she knows a few words in Spanish, she cannot speak it fluently. Her birthday occurs a few weeks before her father's half-birthday, and since he is an Libra, that means her birthday is somewhere in March, making her a Pisces or Aries. Imani is sometimes teased by the students for seeming like a teacher's pet, as she took a high school level math course as an 8th grader. Despite their clashing personalities, her two friends became somewhat closer in later years and were able to find some redeeming qualities in one another that kept them connected. She is often preoccupied with the idea of discovering a certain "It" factor to who she is, particularly when trying to find her place. She and Ebony spend the rest of their lives together as foster parents to several children in Kissimmee, Florida. ENFP 6w7