Personal Essay- The BC (Revised)

*This is the revision of my NYTimes Lives piece

According to many of the members of my extended family being bad at taking care of my hair is one of my personality traits, along with being nerdy and a little weird. Since the age of 10, when I was old enough to sit still in a chair in the salon to get my hair relaxed enough to make it straight, my mother would always make it a point to chastise me with the one insult that every girl lived in terror of,

“It will all fall out if you never take good care of it.”

She would always follow that statement with a judgmental look and say,

“I didn’t grow up like you. I took care of my hair.”

The journey from my childhood to adolescence was spent ignoring the ideology engrained in my head by so many women in my family, that my hair was essential and important, and having straight hair is deemed even more essential to my existence as a little black girl. I never felt the same as my mother did as a child by cherishing those precious strands that poured out of my head, if anything I felt the opposite.

Being African-American meant constant comparisons between yourself and other’s skin color, hair, noses, and butts. While I was born in the 90s my mother, who came from a previous generation spurned by the legacy of Madame C. J. Walker, believed that a woman’s hair should be straightened to look acceptable in society.

I learned at a young age that light skin was good, and good hair was good. Nappy, unkempt, tightly coiled locks were bad, like Celie’s hair in The Color Purple. I spent all of my pre-teen years realizing that I was a made of a frustrating genetic combination that I had no control over. My skin was always going to be darker than both my parents, and my hair was never going to grow past my shoulders. While the other female members of my family would coyly smile as others observed new inches of hair growth when we saw each other during holidays and family vacations, I wore ponytails, pretended to care less about being girly, and sat in silence at the hair salon while my scalp burned from the chemicals in the Just For Me hair relaxers.

At this point, I also was beginning to forget what my hair ever looked like before my curls were permanently altered through damaging chemicals and heat. My whole life revolved around appointments at the Dominican salon around the corner from my house, and my hair was suffering for it. Often, the beauticians at the salons would take over my mother’s job of shaming my lack of commitment to maintaining my hair while putting on plastic gloves to protect their hands and applying the white, creamy, chemical relaxer just above my scalp.

            “You scratch you head mami,”
They would say. Tisk tisk. Scratching the tender scalp before a relaxer almost always resulted in the festering of painful sores that are difficult to get rid of. I would sit through the pain because, the longer one waited to rinse out the relaxer, and the straighter one’s hair will be. Routinely every 4-6 weeks I went in to get it relaxed, and then every two weeks I got it washed, roller set, flat ironed and dried. I wrapped my hair at night, stayed the hell away from pools and rain in order to preserve my hairstyle longer. I hid the detrimental effects of hair loss due to constant chemical treatments in tightly wrapped tissues thrown away in the bathroom wastebasket, and rarely wore it down in order to avoid showing my embarrassing bald spots.

It wasn’t until I was in college that I began to conceive of my hair as something more than just a burden of failed expectations from my family, and that I could take agency over challenging what I originally felt that I was powerless situation with help and advice from other black women. In my sophomore year I met another African-American K student, whose enlightened philosophies on hair maintenance enlightened me when she asked,

            “Have you ever considered going natural?”
Before that moment I had never understood what the concept of going natural really meant until she explained to me that it entailed,

“Freeing yourself from the harmful effects of hair relaxers in order for your hair to become healthy.”

The summer before I was going to spend six months in Europe on study abroad I decided to cut it all off. As I was sitting on a couch in my best middle school friend Kellie’s living room, surrounded by chatter of other people, my brain repeated the same thought process that I had been fighting with since the school year had ended. To big chop or not to big chop? With my thoughts swirling in my brain and adrenaline rushing through my veins, I ask Kellie,

“Do you have a pair of scissors?”

I rushed to the bathroom in a hurry for no reason, itching to get rid of the hair that seemed to metaphorically weigh me down. I stood in front of the mirror, gripping locks and periodically snipping them off with a pair of kitchen shears, and watching as the hair that was once on my head accumulated all over the floor and in the sink, and what was left was less than an inch of new growth that hadn’t yet been tamed by a relaxer. After a few moments, the emotional backlash of having just made a permanent decision about my personal appearance in the span of a few minutes settled over me and filled the room like fog. I kept reaching for hair that didn’t exist, like people with phantom limbs grasping at parts of the body that aren’t there anymore, still feeling the remnants of what once existed as a part of you. I walked downstairs while running hands in my hair, to the shocked and confused glances of my friends. I was critically self aware of the un-professional hack job that I had done, yet felt emancipated from the pressure of having to conform to a standard of beauty that I didn’t subscribe to. Later in the afternoon, when my father came to pick me up to go to brunch, his face dropped when he saw me standing there, wearing Kellie’s big hoop earrings to compensate for my boyish cut.
 “Why did you do that?” He asked me, echoing my friend’s earlier confused stares.
“I don’t know.” I answered back, not really having the right words to explain why I did it, sinking further into a black hole of self-consciousness that I was finding even harder to climb out of.

“I’m not walking outside with you without a hat on,”

He demanded and I complied, fearful of the judgments and staring I could be subjected to from strangers who had zero interest in my self-defiant act of emancipation. However, as my father devoured blueberry pancakes, I stared out the window of our booth at IHOP, wearing a black beanie in the blistering July heat. It finally hit me that I cut off my hair because I was done sitting passively in that salon chair. I told him so, and eventually my mother. And the one word that kept swirling around my brain was liberation. Even almost two years later in the present, as I come across an article asking what it would mean for black women if “Michelle Obama Had Natural Hair” while perusing blogs and youtube videos looking to imitate the right twist out or bantu knot style, I feel liberated. 

Franklin Outline for Lives Piece

Complication: Tanj fails to take agency 

Development: 

1. Mom chastises Tanj

2. Tanj neglects hair

3. Tanj cuts hair

Resolution: Tanj feels liberated

Story Pitch for Profile Piece

Although we were advised last class to not write about a friend or family member, I have decided to kind of go against that suggestion and write about my friend Mele. 

Some quick facts about her:

From Inglewood, California

A recipient of the Posse Foundation Scholarship and a first year at K

Self identifies as Tongan (her family is from a small island called Tonga in the South Pacific/Polynesia)

A member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS/Mormon)

The youngest of 6 kids and was raised by both parents

Her parents emigrated from Tonga over 30 years ago

In my initial interview with her I found out that there are four very important facets of her life that contribute to her identity:

- Faith

- Family

- Education

- Culture as a Tongan

We spent a long time talking about Tongan culture from her perspective and here are a few important aspects that I found really compelling:

-       Tongan culture is a Christian influenced culture

-       Education, God, respect for elders and family are highly valued

I was also really interested in how she described gender relations in her family:

-       There is an important tradition called Faka’Apa'Apa', “respect between genders.” Which in practice basically means that if you are a boy you shouldn’t be around girls and vice versa. So being a girl surrounded by boys is usually frowned upon. Mele grew up with four brothers and because of Faka’ Apa'Apa', she found it difficult to hang out with anyone other than her mom, who was a stay at home wife.

-       Growing up as a girl in Tongan culture meant constantly being over protected/parents were very strict about her going out as a girl.

-       However women are highly valued. The oldest sister of the father in her family is called the Fahu, and is treated like deity. Her aunt (father’s sister) is highly praised in the family and is “big stuff” according to Mele. In the Tongan tradition of giving, the Fahu often receives precious gifts from other family members.

-       There is also a tradition in which the oldest sister names the children of the oldest son and daughter in the family.

So based on this, I think I would like to explore/address Mele’s story of being a part of a Tongan household and the gender relations and/or “culture of family” that she grew up a part of and how she negotiated the complex gender dynamics of her own ethnic culture, and how that intersects with traditional gender and family relations in the U.S. 

CYOA- Response to “Wonder Town”

Before reading this article, I had never heard of Sonic Youth, but I think that the author of this story is effective at using words to describe the sounds that he hears while listening to the band play. I was able to visualize the sound of a guitar strum (low F-sharp notes, etc) or the thumping of drums without the experience of playing those instruments.  However, that didn’t stop me from researching more on Sonic Youth and checking out videos of their musical performances in order to get a better feel of what the author was talking about here.

Along with that, I liked that as a reader I was given a glimpse into the dynamics and history of Sonic Youth from the author’s perspective even though I was not familiar with the band. I also like the way that the author weaves in song titles and lyrics to various songs that the band has played/recorded over the years. It is so interesting to see the trajectory of a band’s life history over the span of decades of being in the music scene. 

CYOA- Response to “Shooting an Elephant”

Overall, I found it really interesting to read a piece of narrative journalism written in the 1930s, from George Orwell of all people! I was surprised at the way in which Orwell carefully uses metaphors for imperialism as a backdrop for the entire story, including the action of shooting the elephant as an important factor in how he interacts with the native people.

The reader gets a good glimpse of Orwell’s thought process throughout the entire encounter, including seeing his contempt for imperialism, and his conflicted feelings with being a white man in a position of power who shoots the elephant in order to not be made a fool of in front of the Burma natives. However, I definitely found my mind wandering off while reading all the exposition in his recounting of the story.  However, the immense amount of detail that Orwell put into crafting this story could count as evidence that he did indeed shoot the elephant. 

Response to Writing for Story

According to Jon Franklin, a story is useless if it introduces a complication without a resolution. The sign of a good writer is to seek out a change that resolves a character’s conflict when writing a story. This is something that I often find challenging as a writer. There may be some topic that I wish to write about, but I often have a lot of trouble seeking out what the real conflict in the story is, and how I can tease out a resolution to the problem. 

This is why I really appreciate reading the chapter on outlining. I have always assumed that creative writing (even creative non-fiction) should develop organically rather than through mechanical mechanisms. I was surprised to read Franklin’s confident assertion that you will have a hard time writing anything without an outline (spaghetti?). This is why I really appreciate that Franklin uses clear and practical rules for writers. I will definitely be using his method of taking index cards and writing the complication on the front and resolution on the back when thinking up a story. The whole idea of noun-verb-noun (i.e. “cancer strikes Joe”) is a really compelling way to force the writer to get straight to the point in an outline. As a writer, I have often found myself writing flowery language in which nothing happens to resolve the story, so I appreciate Franklin’s helpful dose of reality.


I was also really interested in Franklin's comment in the outline chapter the use of action verbs is EXTREMELY important to the creation of a story. I know for a fact that much of the past criticism that I have gotten on my writing has revolved around using passive words. It was another dose of reality to read that writers who don't use active words are hiding behind their passive writing, and are afraid to "hit the main character with a mack truck" so to speak. I am definitely a perpetrator of this. 

1.  I, like Franklin have an intimate knowledge of the "spaghetti" disaster when attempting to write a draft.  What are others experiences with it and how do you overcome this problem, through outlining or otherwise?

2. While Franklin is definitely giving helpful advice to new writers his authoritative voice comes off as rather arrogant and patronizing. Do others feel the same way and how does it impede or further your understanding of what he is trying to say in the novel?

3. Franklin states that the single most important part of writing a dramatic outline is to use action verbs. He makes it extremely clear that your story literally will go nowhere if you don't include them? I often have a hard time consistently doing this in my writing... do you feel the same? 

CYOA- Response to "Emergence"

This piece was something that I have never listened to before. It was like a unique mix between an interactive podcast, Animal Planet or Discovery channel episode, scientific hypothesis and creative non-fiction. While I was advised to close my door and turn off lights in order to really listen to this, I had a hard time listening while wishing I could actually “see” the interview with the ant expert and how she describes how the ants interact with each other.

However, I really liked how the narrators of “Emergence” appealed to the other human senses by describing how ants use pheromones and sense of smell through unplanned accidents and I was really fascinated with how this idea of emergence connects to the creations of cities and neighborhoods. I was so intrigued by the fact that organization (or the science of emergence) comes from the actions of everyone and no one at the same time. This was something that I haven't ever heard of before, but plays into the common idea that disorder breeds order.

Also, in terms of the structure of the piece, I really enjoyed the diverse sounds of nature and city life juxtaposed with narrative. It brought everything together and cemented the connection between insect life and nature to how we view the “civilized” world of city planning.

CYOA- Response to "Jacob's Ladder"

I would like to start this response by expressing a little problem that I had with the writing at the beginning of the article on Zuma… why is it that we always make the assumption that Jesus was white? I understand that the author of the article wanted to place a focus on how resistance leader Jacob Zuma has become known as a hero to South African people, but I found it really interesting that Zuma being called a “black Jesus” in the scene with the woman with the sign carried throughout the article as a prevalent theme that seemed to fascinate the author especially in relation to how the politics of race seems to play out in South Africa.

I also found it interesting how the author of the story compared Zuma to Nelson Mandela in many respects including his party affiliations, education background and personal life. Mandela has always been universally known as a world-wide hero, and while the article tries to show a glimpse into Zuma’s rise to power, as a reader I definitely found that Zuma wasn’t as admirable as Mandela, even when the author tried to depict him as personable. It is always interesting to see how what others write about public figures fashion how we see them. Martin Luther King Jr. was a heavy smoker and cheated on his wife for years, but we all still know him for his unwavering courage as a leader in the civil rights movement.  

Although I don’t know much about the political strife happening in South Africa I thought this article was really informative on current events overall, and I really liked how Foster weaved in personal stories from Zuma's life (like his wife's miscarrage for example) with his quest to be president.

Process Piece for the Lives Essay

One thing that I have always known about myself is that I am an honest person and when talking to others I have never had a hard time telling them about my life experiences, feelings or emotions. However, I feel that the honesty that I try so hard to remain genuine to in my real life hardly ever shows though in my writing. In trying to be honest right now, I would definitely say that I have never been comfortable writing creative non-fiction/narrative/personal story pieces like these. 

I guess it is because I have always found comfort in the presumed authority of theory and “objective” analysis to write papers in my English classes. Which is why I spent a long time on this piece, found it much harder to get my thoughts together, and was worried that I was writing something too emotional, too sentimental, too “hallmark.”

I decided to write about my hair because going natural was a moment in my life that was both symbolic and fundamentally changed how I viewed the world around me. Ultimately writing about this was a moment of catharsis for me, which I think is the reason why people look to writing as an outlet for creative expression. 

The BC

This essay is intended for the NYTimes Lives section

According to many of the members of my extended family being bad at taking care of my hair is one of my personality traits, along with being nerdy and a little weird. Since the age of 10, when I was old enough to sit still in a chair in the salon to get my hair relaxed enough to make it straight, my mother would always make it a point to chastise me with the one insult that every girl lived in terror of,

“It will all fall out if you never take good care of it.”

She would always follow that statement with a judgmental look and say,

“I didn’t grow up like you. I took care of my hair.”

The journey from my childhood to adolescence was spent ignoring the ideology engrained in my head by so many women in my family, that my hair was essential and important, and having straight hair is deemed even more essential to my existence as a little black girl. I never felt the same as my mother did as a child by cherishing those precious strands that poured out of my head, if anything I felt the opposite.

Being African-American meant constant comparisons between yourself and other’s skin color, hair, noses, and butts. I learned at a young age that light skin was good, and good hair was good. Nappy, unkempt, tightly coiled locks were bad, like Celie’s hair in The Color Purple. I spent all of my pre-teen years realizing that I was a made of a frustrating genetic combination that I had no control over. My skin was always going to be darker than both my parents, and my hair was never going to grow past my shoulders. While the other female members of my family would coyly smile as others observed new inches of hair growth when we saw each other during holidays and family vacations, I wore ponytails, pretended to care less about being girly, and sat in silence at the hair salon while my scalp burned from the chemicals in the Just For Me hair relaxers.

At this point, I also was beginning to forget what my hair ever looked like before my curls were permanently altered through damaging chemicals and heat. My whole life revolved around appointments at the Dominican salon around the corner from my house, and my hair was suffering for it. Routinely every 4-6 weeks I went in to get it relaxed, and then every two weeks I got it washed, roller set, flat ironed and dried. I wrapped my hair at night, stayed the hell away from pools and rain in order to preserve my hairstyle longer. I hid the detrimental effects of hair loss due to constant chemical treatments in tightly wrapped tissues thrown away in the bathroom wastebasket, and rarely wore it down in order to avoid showing my embarrassing bald spots.

It wasn’t until I was in college that I began to conceive of my hair as something more than just a burden of failed expectations from my family, and that I could take agency over challenging what I originally felt that I was powerless situation with help and advice from other black women. In my sophomore year I met another African-American K student, whose enlightened philosophies on hair maintenance enlightened me when she asked,

            “Have you ever considered going natural?” Before that moment I had never understood what the concept of going natural really meant until she explained to me that it entailed ,

“Freeing yourself from the harmful effects of hair relaxers in order for your hair to become healthy.”

The summer before I was going to spend six months in Europe on study abroad I decided to cut it all off. As I was sitting on a couch in my best friend Kellie’s living room, surrounded by chatter of other people, my brain repeated the same thought process that I had been fighting with since the school year had ended. To big chop or not to big chop? With my thoughts swirling in my brain and adrenaline rushing through my veins, I ask Kellie,

“Do you have a pair of scissors?” I rushed to the bathroom in a hurry for no reason, itching to get rid of the hair that seemed to metaphorically weigh me down. I stood in front of the mirror, gripping locks and periodically snipping them off with a pair of kitchen shears, and watching as the hair that was once on my head accumulated all over the floor and in the sink, and what was left was less than an inch of new growth that hadn’t yet been tamed by a relaxer. After a few moments, the emotional backlash of having just made a permanent decision about my personal appearance in the span of a few minutes settled over me and filled the room like fog. I kept reaching for hair that didn’t exist, like people with phantom limbs grasping at parts of the body that aren’t there anymore, still feeling the remnants of what once existed as a part of you. I walked downstairs while running hands in my hair, to the shocked and confused glances of my friends. I was critically self aware of the un-professional hack job that I had done, yet felt emancipated from the pressure of having to conform to a standard of beauty that I didn’t subscribe to.

            Later in the afternoon, when my father came to pick me up to go to lunch, his face dropped when he saw me standing there, wearing Kellie’s big hoop earrings to compensate for my boyish cut.

            “Why did you do that?” He asked me, echoing my friend’s earlier confused stares.

            “I don’t know.” I answered back, not really having the right words to explain why I did it. Even after he said,
            “I’m not walking outside with you without a hat on,” The one word I kept going back to was liberation. Even now, as I come across an article asking what it would mean for black women if “Michelle Obama Had Natural Hair” while perusing blogs and youtube videos looking to imitate the right twist out or bantu knot style, I feel liberated. 

Link to the Jezebel article: If Michelle Obama Had Natural Hair