![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.sherryquanlee.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Sherry-Quan-Lee-Photos-134.bmp\" "\\"Sherry")
<\/a> Even now, I shy away from having my picture taken.\u00a0 I see what other people say they don\u2019t.\u00a0 I see an ugly girl.\u00a0 Crooked teeth.\u00a0 A disheveled head of hair.\u00a0 Glasses.\u00a0 I see skin the color of someone my mother wanted me to be, the skin bleached with lemon cream every summer, face covered with make-up starting in seventh grade.\u00a0 Shame. <\/em>\u00a0I wear it still, I wear it well, and I wear it darker than I did in junior high school because I am trying not to be seen as the white girl.\u00a0 I am trying to express in any way I can that despite the Scandinavian neighborhood I grew up in, my father is Chinese, my mother is Black.<\/p>\nYet, it is only this past year, that I accidentally learned I could have straight hair.\u00a0 That my hair dresser one day took it upon herself to blow dry my hair and then put a flat iron through it.\u00a0 I cried.\u00a0 As if for the first time I saw beauty.\u00a0 At age sixty-three I have dark brown hair, highlighted with golden tones, laying flat, half-way down my back-straight hair.<\/p>\n
And, yet, why is it when a friend, at a recent high school reunion, showed a photo of nine-year old me, dressed in a navy skirt and yellow pinafore, a Dutch style hat on my head, I didn\u2019t recognize myself.\u00a0 I asked who is that girl in the front row of Brownies, the dark one amidst all the others.\u00a0 My friend said, “That\u2019s you.”\u00a0 I said, \u201cBut it can\u2019t be me, my mother would never have let me out of the house with frizzy hair.\u201d\u00a0 My hair was like a \u2018fro spilling from the little Dutch cap, and it was like a memory jarring my experience of pomade and hot combs over gas flames, and \u00a0Tonette by Toni perms-until Mother learned to comb the solution through my hair without using the curlers, a reverse perm she called it-to straighten my hair.<\/p>\n My mother always told me I didn\u2019t have good hair and I believed her.\u00a0 Shame<\/em>. How disassociated do we become from the beauty of who we are, based on myth?\u00a0 How was having straightened hair as a child different from experiencing straight hair as an adult?\u00a0 And why do hair dressers, and friends, and sometimes lovers like my naturally curly hair better than my straightened hair?\u00a0 And, why, as a child and as an adult, was my curly coarse hair a curse?\u00a0 (My hair stylist says my hair is not course, I just have a lot of it.) Not all white people have fine straight hair.<\/p>\n My mother had a passing jones.\u00a0 I\u2019ve come to understand that, accept that, know she only wanted her children to survive.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know then what I know now-the history of racism in the United States.\u00a0 My mother was afraid for her children\u2019s safety with good reason.\u00a0 But, was keeping those reasons from us necessary?\u00a0 What if we had known why she had chosen to pass as white?\u00a0 Would I have kept it a secret?\u00a0 Continued the deception? Or feared for my life?<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em>It was the early seventies and I spent time at bars drinking wine, lots of cheap wine with a friend I met at work.\u00a0 We both loved short skirts, tall boots-cheap clothes we bought at Target.\u00a0 Both a size three we could wear inexpensive clothes and have them look good on us.\u00a0 We loved dressing up, going out, looking for love.\u00a0 Her light brown hair was thin and a bit unruly.\u00a0 My black hair was course and more than a bit unruly.\u00a0 We were hip, but not hippies, but we both, for our separate reasons, ratted our hair, believing we had natural afros.\u00a0 Perhaps it was the first time I felt I had the FREEDOM to express who I was, to claim what my mother couldn\u2019t, that I was Black.<\/p>\n One night, driving home from a night out at the Depot with another friend of my friend, high on wine on yet another Thursday night to get us through Friday and another day at work, the conversation turned to hair.\u00a0 And the girl in the front seat, next to my friend that was driving, turned around and said, \u201cWhy do you girls wear your hair like that\u201d?\u00a0 As often was the case throughout my life, I was surprised by her question, and personally offended.\u00a0 And like so many similar conversations and responses, I said, \u201cBecause I am Black.\u201d\u00a0 And, then, on the freeway, she opened the car door and jumped out.\u00a0 At least, that\u2019s how I remember it.<\/p>\n I remember going with a friend, in the 90\u2019s, to pick up her three-year old son who had been hospitalized.\u00a0 We decided to celebrate his recovery by taking him to have his curly hair cut for the first time.\u00a0 I said it had to be a barber, telling her how I took my son for his first hair cut.\u00a0 How the barber sat him on the child\u2019s chair on top of the barber\u2019s chair, and I watched his locks drop to the floor.\u00a0 (After that first hair cut, his hair grew in straight.\u00a0 Hair doesn\u2019t define who we are. )<\/p>\n It was a cold, snowy morning.\u00a0 We entered a Saint Paul neighborhood barbershop near where my friend lived.\u00a0 High in the barber\u2019s chair was a boy with blonde hair, having his hair cut.\u00a0 I was excited for my friend\u2019s son to experience the ritual from baby to toddler in this environment where men sit on their throne, making small talk with each other.<\/p>\n The barber ignored us, as if we weren\u2019t there.\u00a0 We patiently waited. Finally, he bellowed, \u201cWhat is it you want\u201d?\u00a0 We said, \u201cA haircut like that\u201d as my friend\u2019s son stood there bundled in his little blue snow suit, the hood covering his head.\u00a0 The barber replied, \u201cI don\u2019t cut hair like his.\u201d\u00a0 We stood there, silent.\u00a0 Why didn\u2019t we respond?\u00a0 Why didn\u2019t we scream, but, you have no idea what kind of hair he has?\u00a0 Why did we, when he said, \u201cthe guy across the way, cuts hair like his,\u201d walk away instead of protesting.\u00a0 Shame.<\/em>\u00a0 Why didn\u2019t we pull the hood from my friend\u2019s son\u2019s head and ask, \u201cAnd, why can\u2019t you cut his hair?\u201d Why did we, after we made ourselves small, retreating from the barbershop, suddenly fill with outrage?\u00a0 And why didn\u2019t we follow through with contacting the better business bureau to report this barber who so boldly refused to wait on a brown baby boy?\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t about his hair.\u00a0\u00a0 It was about the color of his skin, the color of his mother\u2019s skin.\u00a0 It was about Minnesota not so nice.\u00a0 And it was about sometimes we are just so tired of it all, sometimes we are just so tired.<\/p>\n The same friend and I, a few years later, went to a \u201cwe do ethnic hair\u201d salon to get my hair cut.\u00a0 They said I didn\u2019t have Black hair!\u00a0 Maybe I had mixed-race hair. \u00a0My friend said I had hair like her mother\u2019s-are you telling me my mother isn\u2019t Black?<\/em>\u00a0 What is Black?\u00a0 Were they talking about my hair or the color of my skin?\u00a0 Shame.<\/em> Mixed messages.\u00a0 Good hair.\u00a0 Bad hair.\u00a0 What is my hair?\u00a0 Who am I?<\/p>\n Once, when I was in my teens, I went to a hair salon in North Minneapolis.\u00a0 The stylists didn\u2019t question me or my hair.\u00a0 It used to be that one drop of Black blood labeled you Black.\u00a0 Today, one drop of Black blood is not always enough and you could be asked to prove yourself.\u00a0 I guess I\u2019ve been trying to prove myself all of my life.<\/p>\n My mother spent her life trying to keep her Black identity hidden.\u00a0 Even in her 80\u2019s, living in a senior high rise, she couldn\u2019t admit she was Black.\u00a0 A woman from the center washed and set my mother\u2019s hair.\u00a0 One day she braided Mom\u2019s hair.\u00a0 Then, she asked my mother if she was Indian.\u00a0 There was a moment of awkward silence.\u00a0 I finally let loose the family secret.\u00a0 \u201cShe\u2019s Black,\u201d I said.\u00a0 I had to remove my mother\u2019s braids before she would go down to the dining hall for dinner.\u00a0 Shame?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n