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Black Hair Day
Annette Quarcoopome
GhanaGALLERYCONVERSATION
There too, I would grip my handbag tightly at my side, to protect myself from the jostling crowd and erect a barrier between myself...
In the five minutes it took me to walk from my dorm room to the library, I realized that the loudest chorus in my head was an echo of what I had grown up hearing at home. I paused at the entrance to the library, one hand on the door, unable to move. I was paralyzed by my own tumultuous thoughts. Even here, in rural New England where it was zero degrees Celsius in April, worlds away from my home on the West African coast, I was haunted by what I had been told I was supposed to look like.
I've always had what people call good hair: straight, long and obedient. I'm not as scared of water as most other women with chemically-relaxed hair are because I can return my hair to its relaxed, non-frizzy state with minimal effort.
My hair has been treated with chemical relaxers for so long that it never occurred to me that I wasn't born with straight, manageable hair. For nearly 20 years everyone, myself included, has grown used to me looking a certain way. Visiting the hairdresser every six weeks to have my hair treated never felt like a farce because, at least, I was not one of those girls who wore fake hair.
When I came to the United States to attend college, suddenly  women of color looked different to me. Aside from the perms and weaves I was used to, there were women who chose to wear their natural hair in dreadlocks, sister locks, afros, twisties, braids. Intrigued, I started talking to them and concluded that they really love their hair and themselves.
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