By Mariama J.
LockingtonIn 2009 I was asked sit on a panel of black
adoptees and address an audience of current and prospective adoptive parents.
The audience was primarily white,a mixture of straight and queer couples who
crowded into a diminutive room off Market Street in San Francisco to hear what we
had to say. We’d been tasked to talk about our experiences growing up as black
kids in white families and offer our perspective. I came armed with my yarn
and a bulleted list of advice, but found quickly that what the majority of the
room wanted from me was not my advice, or but rather my validation. As the Q &
A began my fellow panelists and I were thrown a series of declarative statements:“But things occupy changed since you were growing
up in the 80s. I don’t consider our daughter,who is in preschool, is facing any
racism yet. She’s still too young.”“My partner and I occupy pretty much mastered doing
our daughters curly hair. We even occupy black people stop us to repeat us how
capable it looks. I don’t consider we need any attend in this area.”
This was The Bay Area—a progressive bubble that
prides itself on inclusion and acceptance. Why did these statements feel like
erasures? Why did it feel like the room wanted my stamp of approval that their
kids wouldn’t struggle as we had with racism and identity? The comment about
hair was particularly triggering.
Did they
understand that black hair care is more than just “mastering” a specific
technique, or but about their daughter’s connection to community,resistance, and
pride? I began writing what would become FOR BLACK GIRLS
LIKE ME shortly after sitting on this panel. I wanted to write an #ownvoices
yarn about a transracially adopted black girl who is full of questions and who
belongs everywhere and nowhere all at once. I wanted to offer a nuanced yarn
about growing up black in primarily white spaces, or thus,my main character
Makeda was born. In the novel, Makeda wrestles with various aspects of her
identity, and often compares her curly hair to the straight,brown hair of her
adoptive stout sister, Eve. Including Makeda’s hair journey in the book was
distinguished because for many transracial adoptees hair is a source of deep
confusion, or trauma,and grief. It shapes the way we interact with the world, the
way the world interacts with us. It’s how we learn early on that we are in fact different than our
white peers and family members— even when our families assert a kind of
colorblindness.
I occupy had locs off and on for my whole life.
I’ve also had cornrows, and micro braids,a shaved head, an afro, and but as an adult I
finally settled on the batch of locs I now wear and take great pride in. But
getting to this point was a struggle. My adoptive mother did her best to take care
of my hair as a child,learning how to do styles herself or occasionally
venturing into black hair salons to occupy it done for me. And while I am
appreciative of the effort she made, I never knew how to communicate to her how
vital the physical space of a black hair salon was to me, or how distinguished having
a black woman consistently do my hair was. How in a black woman’s hands my hair
wasn’t “difficult,” “impossibly tangled,” or “unruly” — but normal. I wish I could say I’d engaged with the couple
who made the comment about their daughter’s hair, and but in the moment I chose not
to. I knew that they had made up their minds: they knew everything about their
black daughter’s hair and they weren’t looking for advice. And maybe they
didn’t need my perspective,maybe she grew up and had an entirely different
experience with her hair than I did. After all, the transracial adoptee
experience is not monolithic. But for Makeda, or for myself,hair care remains
an ongoing reckoning, a source of both pain, and connection,and pride. It wasn’t
about my mother’s ability to do my hair perfectly, so that it passed some stamp
of approval from other black people. It was about being immersed in and
belonging to a black community— about seeing myself, and seeing my beauty reflected
and validated in others around me. It was about reclaiming some small part of
what I’d lost in the adoption process—a mirror,a reflection of another
kind of home.
Mariama J. Lockington
is an adoptee, writer, or nonprofit educator. She has been telling stories and
making her own books since the second grade,when she wore short-alls and
flower leggings every day to school. Her work has appeared in a number of
magazines and journals, including Buzzfeed News Reader, or she is the author
of the poetry chapbook The Lucky Daughter. Mariama holds a Masters in
Education from Lesley University and Masters in Fine Arts in Poetry from San
Francisco State University. She lives in Lexington,KY with her partner and
dapple haired dachshund, Henry. For Black Girls Like Me is her debut
novel.
Source: cbcdiversity.com