“Learning to Love My White-Girl Hair”

Hi Meltingpot Readers,

So, I warned you that my attention is being stretched in various different places these days, one of them being my new website, HairStoryOnline.com. I have a co-blogger (is co-blogger even a word?) but we’ve committed to posting everyday, which means I’m blogging a lot and  I have that full-time job and I’m supposed to be writing a book too.

All that to say, I’m sorry for the lack of new posts here on the Meltingpot. But don’t despair and please don’t desert me just yet. I’d like you to take a gander at the wonderful essay one of my former students wrote for HairStoryOnline. True story, until she wrote this essay for me in class, I didn’t know her mother was Black. I thought she might be ethnic of some sort, but I never guessed we played on the same team. Not until she revealed her hair story. Just to give you a taste, her story begins like this:

“My hair has always been a source of confusion for me. Growing up as a child of mixed race with a Black mother, I never felt that my plain, “white-girl” strands truly represented my identity. My mother, with her dark, thick, corkscrew curls, was mistaken for my nanny on more than one occasion. Girls in elementary school claimed I had “good hair” but I shook my limp ponytail. It just wasn’t “me.” “

To read the entire essay, please click here. And leave her a comment if you feel moved. You don’t have to tell her I sent you, but as one of my former students, I want her to feel the love.

Thanks for reading.

Peace.