Una Mestiza de la Calle Haight

Beautiful flower clips for Curly Hair

2011-12-31T00:00:00.000-08:00

After my hair fiasco my dear friend Isha sent me a wonderful collection of handmade flower pins and earrings that she makes and sells on Etsy. They come in many different colors and styles, and I've been matching each flower with my outfit of the day.

Get yours here:

Isha's Flower Garden

Thanks, Isha!

Will You Date My Hair?

2011-12-19T23:22:00.000-08:00

Finding a good stylist is like trying to find a good boyfriend. You want someone who "gets" you, who knows what they're doing when they touch you, and someone who makes you feel beautiful instead of ruining what beauty you already have.

I have no trouble rejecting men. I can usually tell within five minutes of a date if I'm going to like the guy or not. There's that instant chemistry (or lack thereof) that speaks volumes. If he's an hour late, that's one strike against him. If he forgets his wallet, that's another. If he pressures me to get into his car I know to run the other way, and if he wants me to drive an hour to his house on the second date with no plan other than coming over, I know not to get behind the wheel.

What's funny is that this confidence and intuition doesn't translate when I'm on a salon chair. I can pour out my sob story about how a previous stylist refused to do my hair or cut off uneven chunks at random, but every time I get in a new salon chair I'm convinced that this stylist will know exactly what to do. And it's not that I don't do my research. I just seem to be destined to have horrible stylists. Maybe they should make therapy sessions for people who have codependent relationships with stylists and who always seem to "choose the wrong one."

Last Tuesday I went to a new stylist. This was an inevitable change as I'd moved from the Pacific Northwest back to California. I found her salon on Yelp as one that got high recommendations for working with natural black hair. My first faux pas was in not making sure I got the stylist recommended on the site, but instead booked an appointment with the one who answered the phone.

After

I got in her chair, chatted her up, and entrusted her with one of my most valuable and only painstakingly-replaceable assets. I went in for a highlight touch up at my roots and a simple cut. Four hours later all I'd received was the highlights. Though my previous highlights were only 6 or 7 small sections, this stylists kept going and going with what must have been close to thirty. My hair began to sizzle a little under the dryer, but I chalked this up to it being hotter than the one I'd been under at my previous salon, and fell asleep. After the normal 30 minutes under heat, I got my rinse, paid my money, and dashed out the door to work. Once I got to work I realized that the "copper" highlights were bright orange/pink. Once I got home I realized that I'd also been partially balded. Not only that but she'd charged me $20 more than what she quoted me over the phone and I came to regret my $15 tip.

To make a long story short, I called her and she discovered that she wasn't supposed to put me under the dryer. She offered me a partial refund and a reconstructor treatment and then cancelled my treatment half an hour before it was scheduled because she wanted more sleep. Later that afternoon we each pulled up in front of her salon and I felt like I was in the middle of a drug deal as she handed me the cash. Once she saw my hair she insisted it was copper ("copper is orange, just like your [bright] orange sweater") and proclaimed my hair healthy even though it had been entirely sapped of natural oils and lay as dead on my head as if I had put my finger in a light bulb. (Yes, for kinky curly haired girls, "dead" does not mean flaccid.)

I took my partial refund to a Regis which is the chain of my previous stylist in Washington. I had her on the phone at the new salon, and my stylist said to run away as fast as I could, which I wasn't surprised about as the woman took one look at my hair and didn't want to have anything to do with it. Not because of the color but because my hair is so thick and curly. My stylist's sentiment was reinforced when the woman behind the counter lost my hair band, searched the entire salon and couldn't find one, and then tried to give me a rubber band instead. In a salon.

I'm reading tragic mulatta literature for a graduate class and so I'm immersed in mulattas who do not feel like they fit in either white or black society (though by the end they often choose black). I'd like to say that this double-consciousness is long gone, only, through my discussions with other mixed-race women--and black women who have decided to go natural--we're finding that there is almost no one out there who is willing or able to touch our hair. I for one I have decided that I will give myself a haircut, and that the only other person I'll entrust with scissors is my Washington stylist when I next go up for a visit. She is the only white person who will cut my hair (yes, I've been turned away that many times!) and black stylists always fry it to pieces because that's they only way they know how to deal with their own hair.

After a period of being worried that I would have to chop off my mane and start all over, home care, a well-placed hair wrap and a little bit of patience looks like it will slowly bring my hair back to a normal state. As for my mentality, stylists will now have to meet me, woo me, and prove their worth before I'll hand myself over.

How to talk to your mixed race friend, family member, or stranger

2011-07-17T15:39:00.000-07:00

With America becoming increasingly diverse, there is a growing need for education about proper etiquette when approaching the topic of race with a mixed race contact. I myself have many white friends and family members who struggle to find appropriate and politically correct terminology when discussing race with me. I know their fumbling comes out of a genuine desire to bridge the racial gap and assert their acceptance of me and other mixed race individuals. Below is a crash course in what -- and what not -- to say.

1. Don't ask: "What are you?"

Many mixed race individuals including myself will be offended by this question. While the question itself comes from a place of natural curiosity, the way it is worded implies that the person in question is somehow subhuman or defined entirely by his or her race.

Instead ask: "What is your ethnicity / ethnic makeup," etc.

Many mixed race individuals (also including myself) love this question when worded this way. Are we being nit-picky? Maybe. But unless you're a minority yourself, you represent the majority and we represent the "Other." In general we love to celebrate our otherness with those who are genuinely interested and who show that they view us positively through the way they ask.

Caveat: Some mixed race individuals don't like this question at all, so the guideline above only works on a case by case basis.

2. Don't say: "You're beautiful because you're exotic."

Again, such a statement may make us feel subhuman and more like an animal in a zoo. We don't want to be beautiful because of the way we differ from whites. Rather, we want to be beautiful of our own accord, and we believe a white person can be just as good looking as we are. In fact, if we are part white ourselves, saying we're beautiful because we're exotic means that half of our ethnic makeup is not beautiful.

Instead say: "You're beautiful."

Who doesn't like to be told they're beautiful? This statement is sure to flatter the receiver and you can steer clear of race talk completely.

Caveat: Some mixed race individuals do love to be noticed for their exoticism, so again, I can't speak for everyone.

3. Don't say: "I'm color-blind" or "I don't see color."

Mixed race individuals don't like this statement because we can't relate. We see color every single day, there is no way around it. We notice the one black student in the class, or the one Asian student at the party. We notice the races of all the characters in every TV show or movie, of every person in every commercial, and in every magazine ad. We don't notice these things because we are obsessed with race. Rather, because of growing up as an "Other," there is no way for us not to notice the races of those around us.

Rather say: Nothing. There's really no PC equivalent to this statement. Just avoid it!

Even "I love every color of the rainbow" or "I appreciate everyone's differences" can be taken as an insult. Why? Because like it or not, every single human being has prejudice inside them, even us. We should all fight against it, of course, but not being at all affected by race isn't possible.

4. Don't say: "African-American."

Once upon a time, African-American was politically correct. Much in the same way that homosexual was the PC term over gay. However, just as gays have taken back their original definer, so have blacks. African-American is now passe, because it's an irrelevant definition. After all, we don't call whites European-American, and many of us have ethnic roots in America that go all the way back to the 1600s.

Instead say: "black."

Remember the Black is Beautiful movement of the 60s? Well it's back.

Caveat: The plural of "black" is most often "black people," not "blacks." And especially not "the blacks." Again, this may be a nit-picky criteria, but no one wants to pull a Donald Trump and say "I have a great relationship with the blacks." We're not one unit, we are all individuals.

Mixies: What rules of etiquette do you have to contribute? Are there any here that you disagree with?

--Shannon Luders-Manuel

Catalog Models with Natural Hair

2011-07-09T23:37:00.000-07:00

I've noticed a pattern in my online shopping habits. If a black woman is wearing a particular item of clothing, it makes me pay more attention to it. And if she has natural hair, I get a warm fuzzy feeling inside my chest like I am not a freak of nature but a catalog-worthy beauty, wild mane and all.

Here are some examples of natural beauties rocking the pages of online catalogs.

Check out this Venus vixen. So chic!

I first noticed this model a couple years ago and wrote Gap a big thank you!

Light skinned and still able to embrace her literal roots for Nordstrom. Sweet!

Forever 21 has this fierce model on its front page, though I can't find her actually modeling anything.

Well, catalog world, it's a start! Do any of my readers have more naturally nappy model findings to share?

-- Shannon Luders-Manuel

Should you get strabismus surgery?

2011-06-11T20:04:00.000-07:00

I'm going to deviate from my normal topic for a moment and discuss my rare eye condition, as I know there are others out there like me who look for information about it on the internet. Here's my story, in completely lay terms:

I was born with Duane's syndrome (my right eye can't look to the right or to the left). I used an eye patch briefly when I was a kid and wore special glasses to help make the eye stronger.

I was born with both eyes able to look straight ahead when my head was faced straight ahead. As I got older, I had to turn my head increasingly to the left in order for my eyes to line up and work together. If I didn't turn my head, one eye would be focused on the object in front of me and the other would be off doing its own thing. For the most part I didn't notice it. It happened so gradually that it had just become second nature to me. But as you can see, over the years it had become pretty severe:


Looking "straight ahead"

I conversed this way, read this way, and even drove this way. A couple years ago I went to a top medical school and had surgery to correct the strabismus. It was a Children's Hospital, as strabismus affects mainly children, but the surgeons there will of course fix the problem at an age. I was put under general anesthesia and my pupils were sutured and pulled into a correct position.

While I am for the surgery and not against it, here's some information you'll want to know ahead of time to help make your decision and to make sure you have the best recovery possible:

Don't take any Ibuprofen for a week before the surgery as it acts as a blood thinner.
After the sutures are in place, you will be asked to wake up and wait for the anesthesia to wear off, and then the opthamologist adjusts the sutures as necessary.
As you're coming out of the anesthesia, it will take awhile to be able to open your eyes, and if they put a breathing tube down your throat, you may have a hard time talking at first.
If it's too painful to get the sutures adjusted while you're awake, it's possible for the anesthesiologist to put you back under for the surgeon to complete the procedure.
There will be a lot of post-op bleeding (bloody tears) that may take several days to go away.
Your eyes may feel sandpapery for several days.
If the sandpaper feeling doesn't go away after a couple of weeks, you may need to go in to get the exposed end of the suture trimmed, which is not painful.

While my recovery was more difficult than most, the outcome was definitely worth it. And while it is mostly a cosmetic procedure, insurance does cover it. Or at least it does in some cases... I can only speak for myself! Now that my eyes are aligned, I no longer need 10 and 12-strength prisms. I look invested in the person I'm talking to instead of annoyed or flippant, and I have become a better driver.

Hope this helps!

--Shannon Luders-Manuel

Post-op

The Garnier Girls

2011-06-07T05:51:00.000-07:00

Is it just me, or do the women of Garnier Fructis commercials have better hair before they "use the product"? Here is an example, not of one I've seen on TV, but of one I found on youtube:

We seem to have two parallel trends going on right now in fashion. One is a continuation of straight haired women being pressured to iron their hair even straighter, and the other is a comeback of big hair on the trendsetting platform of the runway. Granted, neither straight hair nor curly hair is better than the other. But in my opinion Garnier would be better off to show women with a lot more distressed hair in their "before" footage. Healthy hair, like a healthy body, should always be the goal no matter what form it comes in.

Women of the world: let's celebrate our curls!

--Shannon Luders-Manuel

I Support Elizabeth Smart

2011-04-30T23:01:00.000-07:00

The following article of mine was reprinted without my permission and I don't endorse or support the blogger's theories on Elizabeth Smart:

Who is more disturbed: Gerry McCann or Ed Smart?
CAPTIVE AMERICA: SMART, ROWLANDSON AND THE COLONIAL SENTIMENT
Shannon Luders-Manuel

I'm posting my statement here because there is no way to contact the blogger or to post comments on her site. Elizabeth, I am so very sorry for what happened to you and that there are those who claim your abduction was all a propagandist scam. My article in no way supports that theory.

The original can be viewed on Vanderbilt's website, here:

AmeriQuests, Vol 7, No 1 (2010)

-- Shannon Luders-Manuel

Big Hair Makes a Comeback on What Not to Wear

2011-04-17T02:00:00.000-07:00

Tonight I sat down on the couch in my sweats and watched one of my favorite shows: What Not to Wear. They've had black women on the show before, but Amanda Rodriguez is one of the only clients I've seen with natural hair. I was nervous for her when it got time for her hair makeover. I was sure the stylist was going to cut off major length and iron her beautiful curls straight, especially since he usually irons even relatively straight hair. I relaxed a little when I saw Ted Gibson pop up on the screen -- the black stylist who has replaced the much loved Nick Arrojo. Normally I prefer Arrojo, but Gibson being black made me hopeful that he would let her keep her god-given curls.

Not only did Gibson honor my wish, but he actually made her hair bigger. Instead of killing her curls, he used a diffuser, advised her not to shampoo her hair every day, and to use leave-in conditioner. Teri LaFlesh, author of Curly Like Me, says it's best not to use a hair dryer at all (which I don't follow or I seem to have water dripping down my back) and to leave in actual conditioner and not leave-in conditioner (which I do follow and it's made a world of difference). But regardless of slight variations of upkeep and styling, his advice to Rodriguez, which was also advice to the millions of viewers, was a breath of forward thinking fresh air in a behind the times hair world, much like Urban Outfitters high rise jeans that actually look cute and get rid of the 21st century faux pas of female butt crack. But that's another story for another time.

While I haven't seen every episode of What Not to Wear, I have seen only one other where the stylist made a black woman's hair bigger than it already was. Granted, most of the few black clients who come on the show already have chemically straightened hair, so there is no curl left to work with. Even though I had seen that one previous episode, the one I saw tonight stood out to me more. Maybe because Rodriguez is my age, or has my body, or has my exact hair texture. Maybe it's because, like me, she's a compulsive smiler even when her pet dies. Whatever the reason, the fact that Ted Gibson celebrated her curls, is, for me, a step forward in mainstream culture accepting us curly-haired women just as we are.

After finishing the show, I broke the cardinal rule and went out to Walgreen's in everything What Not to Wear said not to wear. But hey, it was 1:00 a.m.

--Shannon Luders-Manuel

The anti-anti-processed hair movement

2011-03-01T00:33:00.000-08:00

Rachel Jessica Daniel

In grad school, my friend Rachel sported a magnificent afro. As each year went by the gravity defying circle atop her head grew at an excitingly alarming rate. She prided herself on her natural nappiness with fervor akin to the black is beautiful movement of the 70s. Because of this I was very surprised when Rachel decided to give up her natural fro and sport a long, sleek weave instead. On her facebook page, she stated that black women should not be defined by their hair. Since reading this statement I have come to ponder over her words and develop my own opinion as to the validity and strength behind her statement. My question to myself, and now to you the readers is: Is defining ourselves by natural hair just as restricting as our predecessors who defined theirs by their ability to make their hair behave?

I myself admit that I am guilty of judging black women who keep their hair in what I term to be the self-oppression mirrored to us by white society. I wonder how these women can perpetuate the notion that our hair must be sleek and shiny in order to fit into Caucasian society. I want these women to caste off the shackles of hair slavery and create new lives for themselves dictated by their own definition of what is beautiful. So when I read Rachel's words, I automatically felt that her new position had let me down. How could someone so dedicated to the cause just give up like that? How could she turn her back on us and call us women who define ourselves by our hair?

But do we, as biracial women, perhaps use our belief in the beauty of natural hair in a way that undermines our more fully black sisters with kinkier manes? Just as people come in all colors, so does hair come in all textures, and those of us who have one parent with straighter, sleeker hair are of course bound to have looser, spirally curls. And many of us biracial women--myself among them--are on the front lines of supporting mixed race marriages which, while natural, is a choice to step outside of the more socially acceptable mores of one's race.

And going one step further, perhaps claiming that only natural hair is beautiful is just as limiting and dangerous to black expression as saying that only weaves or chemical treatments are. After all, my decision to go natural coincided with a decision to adorn myself with a nose ring, painted fingernails, and makeup -- all anti-natural modes of self-representation. Sure, all those things are supposed to enhance natural beauty, but they in and of themselves are not natural. So why is altering one's hair any less socially acceptable?

Hearing my friend Rachel's words hasn't changed the way I want to do my hair, but it has challenged my quick judgments against other women for their own hair choices. Perhaps the freedom to go natural and the freedom to alter comes from the same place: namely, the freedom to make one's own choices. I have to admit that when I do get my wonderful curls ironed straight for a haircut, I'm blown away by how sleek and shiny my own hair looks and I revel in being able to do the things other girls do, like tuck my hair behind my ears or run my fingers through it without it frizzing up. I love my curls too much to straighten them permanently or add a weave, but now I won't beat myself up at getting a blow out every now and then. After all, those with naturally straight hair don't question their race loyalty when they take out the curling iron. Yes, Rachel, our hair does not define us. Our power comes from the knowledge that we can make our own hair choices, and create our own unique looks and be whoever we want to be.

--Shannon Luders-Manuel


Ready...

Set...

Go!

From Pullman Porter Grandpa to Conductor Me

2011-02-15T16:11:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Teri LaFlesh, author of Curly Like Me, my blog has gotten new followers and a tighter focus, namely, that wonderful thing called biracial hair and the beautiful women who sport it. Soon I will interview Teri, who was kind enough to feature my hair on her blog with a link to mine. Right now, however, I want to simply offer up a bit of firsthand advice based on her haircare system.

Because of Teri, I now braid my hair every night to keep the curls healthy and contained. No more dry combing and ruining my ends with tugs and pulls. On days when I don't go out, I often like to leave the braids in. And, lets face it, sometimes even when I do go out I like to leave them in, instead of running palmfuls of water and rubbing conditioner through my huge mane. This is especially true when my day only consists of picking up a prescription at the drug store or buying a carton of milk.

Since I most often make six braids -- three on each side of my head -- I can't just walk out of the house with my hair as is. No one wants to look like Medusa while they're standing in line at the store. A couple months ago I tried on a "conductor hat", almost as a joke, but realized right away how fabulous it looked on me. That $14 purchase is now one of the smartest I've made. I simply pull the hat over my head and viola!, Not only do I look put together, I look fabulously stylish. An excellent replacement for my ghetto-looking bandannas. (Hey, I'm not knocking the ghetto... I used to live in East Side San Jose!) I recommend such a look to all the biracial ladies out there. Who says we have to be tied down by our hair?

Target doesn't have this particular hat anymore, but here is a similar style:

Target Knit Cap

I know I'm not the first to realize the awesomeness of these hats, but if you're as slow to find fashion as I am, maybe this will help you along.

--Shannon Luders-Manuel

Hello, World

2010-12-07T07:45:00.000-08:00

I haven't written much lately because I've been working on an anonymous blog, and because I'm suffering from "stage fright" with this one. When I began my online journey, at www.shannonluders.com, I was fresh out of college with a stack of newspaper columns under my belt. A friend had been pressuring me to get a website for years, and I had finally assented, because I finally had something worthwhile to say to the masses. That website is defunct now with no way of updating it due to a stolen computer, so a couple years ago I started this blog, not so much as a way to blog, but as a place to link all my outside articles into one destination. Now that these articles are being published in such professional places, getting my name out there into cyberspace, I'm a bit at odds about what I want this actual blog reel to be. Type my name into google, and you'll find a plethora of pages, and with my hyphenated name, there is only one me. I now face the moment in my professional career where I withhold my last name from people I date until I'm ready for them to have access to my public persona. And as an almost-graduated, now long-distance student who's laying low until the next phase of her career starts, there's really not a whole lot to share.

So until I figure out the next stage, peace out to all my beautiful readers. The future awaits.

--Shannon Luders-Manuel

Flaunt What You've Got

2010-03-11T06:07:00.000-08:00

After two hairstylists turning away my naturally curly hair in Amherst, Massachusetts, I've returned to the West coast and found someone who shapes, snips, and shampoos my hair fearlessly. She and the manager ooh and ahh, asking if they can touch my corkscrew splendor. The stylist gives it fresh layers, which no one had done since I moved to the East coast three years ago, and at the end of the appointment she actually invites me to return.

What is it between East coast and West? It's not a matter of town versus city, for I found my life-changing hairstylist in a little town in Oregon. Maybe it's a West coast celebration of working with what you've got instead of trying to be someone you're not. Or maybe it's just the luck of finding gems in an industry that doesn't learn how to embrace black hair in its natural fashion.

Today was Ty-Over day on Top Model. As always, a number of girls came out of the salon with extensions. I understand the workings of the modeling industry, but as she is a proud black woman, I wish that Tyra could impart a proudness of black hair in all its frizzy glory. Sure, modeling is all about adopting a persona, but maybe if Tyra let the girls be nappy they would be more happy and not tear each other to pieces every cycle in the model house.

March (or late February) also marked the month of Chris Rock's "Good Hair" documentary on DVD. Just as Indian women work in (I assume sweat shop) factories to provide our provocative Victoria's Secret underwear, those same women have their heads shaved in religious ceremonies, and, unbeknownst to them, have that precious hair sold on the "black market" in America. Black women cherish these weaves as if they were cherished poodles. The weaves do just as much for their social status as the pets do to "celebutants" in New York and L.A. But poodles poop, and hair comes off, and what are we left with? The adornment of another creature's precious locks.

There is a biracial model by the name of Gabrielle on this cycle of Top Model, who actually entered the competition with her own hair, and got to keep that same hair after the Tyover. While her hair is dyed, yes, each strand is actually her own. It falls about her face in curly ringlets that are just a little bit out of hand. My cousin calls her look angelic. I call it a breath of fresh air.

--Shannon Luders-Manuel

East of My Eden

2009-12-24T21:25:00.000-08:00

I’m packing up my apartment in preparation for my flight back to what my long time friends affectionately call the “Better coast.” As a writer, I can’t not take this time to reflect on the past two and a half years I spent at an East coast graduate institution. Anyone who follows my blog knows that I live in the liminal space between clear definitions, and now that I have lived in New England, my bi-coastal existence is no exception. People often ask me what the major differences are between the two coasts. After repeatedly wracking my brain, the only thing I can come up with is that the East coast is where our traditional history comes from, and is the landscape upon which children’s books are based. It’s been surreal to me to live in a place that has housed Emily Dickenson, Noah Webster, and many other historical figures that I am too lazy to remember at the moment. L.A. may be the place of movies and reality TV, Manhattan may be the Big Apple, but New England houses our history in the day to day, nitty gritty sense. It’s the birthplace or Mecca of many of our historical politicians, poets, writers, and cultural icons. And when we open Peter Rabbit, Little Women, and (if we include Canada) Anne of Green Gables, the East coast reflects the landscape of such classic stories. When you move to the East coast you learn that the town of Mystic, which brought us Julia Roberts’ debut role, is in fact a real place and that yes, Boston is just as obsessed with the Red Sox as is portrayed, and that L.L. Bean backpacks with embroidered initials--and black North Face fleeces--are worn by everyone and no one thinks it’s funny.

The differences and similarities between the two coasts are not my intended focus of this blog entry, however. Rather, it is what my time in the East coast has given me. Though I have only spent two and a half years here, I am leaving a somewhat different person that the girl who arrived. First of all, at the age of 33 I no longer see myself as a “girl.” This comes mainly from the experience of having taught actual girls (and boys), and of being given the power to give them As or Fs at my discretion. It’s knowing that I have changed lives for the better through helping students realize the liminal spaces in which they live, and to question the standard assumption that everything occurs in black and white. Just as life-changing, the East coast has given me my first ever set of black and biracial friends who will never know just how big of a void they filled. I see myself reflected back through them, in both a literal and metaphorical sense. Not only do we share similar skin tones and similar hair, but I now don’t question myself when I see things through race-conscious eyes and when I get upset about race issues that don’t seem to bother my (though wonderful) white friends and family. Lastly, for those of you who know me well, I am returning to the “Better coast” with the ability to take my life and my relationships to the next level. In numerous ways the East coast has “fixed me,” and for that I am eternally grateful.

--Shannon Luders-Manuel

Caucasia and me

2009-11-16T18:34:00.001-08:00

The first time I came across a work of literature about a biracial character was Alex Haley's Queen. I found a tattered copy in my mother's small bookcase and I engulfed it with desperate fervor. While not as revered as Roots, due to the Haley's death before its completion and its subsequent completion by a less academic author, it had an impact on me like no other book, as I finally saw myself reflected in the protagonist. One downside to this novel was that it takes place during slavery -- an era in which I of course have no personal experience. It thus put my story into antiquity and outside of the goings on of 21 century life.

The second major work of literature to touch me on a racial level was Lise Funderburg's ethnography, Black, White, Other. I came across the title in a copy of Teaching Tolerance magazine, made my first Amazon.com purchase in 1995, and ate up the essays written by biracial men and women that the editor had interviewed. These were Americans just like me -- some young, some old, some in college, some in the working world, and all connected by the double ethnicity they shared.

After that came a short string of men's biracial memoirs (three over a period of over about ten years), followed by a similarly short string of biracial fiction that just happened to make its way into my grad school studies. The fiction I came across almost by happenstance, and mostly included antebellum novels written by white authors, thrown into syllabi dealing with Victorianism and Romanticism. I saw myself, but I saw myself through their lens, not through my own. I was a trope, I stood for something, but I was not a human being with a character arc or the ability to simply exist on the page. And, while this isn't true of all antebellum literature of the time, I was always male.

Then came Danzy Senna's Caucasia. Just having finished it about ten minutes ago, I have a similar feeling to the one I felt after completing my novel. A sense of finally seeing myself written down, my story finally told. Only, in this instance, I had the luxury of reading about myself through someone who shared my own experiences but was not in fact me. What does this mean to the biracial academic? It means that her personhood, her existence, is no longer silent in mainstream literature. Finally she is not just an antebellum figure to stand in for the injustices of slavery, and no longer is she a figure that is just as racialized as the institution the abolitionists sought to destroy. She is not just the protagonist of a memoir who has no place in fiction. Finally she is a heroine in a novel that tells her story -- one where the Pakistani mistakes her for a fellow countryman, one where her father hides behind his theories on race and wishes his daughter were blacker, one where she must constantly change her form in order to survive, where her skin at once makes her stand out from those around her and blend into any definition of the Other.

This can be seen as a tale of the tragic mulatto, yes. But it is also a tale of resilience, wisdom, and insight. It is not a tragedy, and it is not a blind celebration. Rather it is a fashioning of the mulatta protagonist into the role of all protagonists -- one who sees her world and herself and struggles to come to terms with both. It is a tale of self-discovery, growth, and character development -- present in most fiction, but absent in most biracial fiction of the past. In the literary sense, it is finally granted the agency to be a tale of everyone, everywhere, for we all struggle to find our place in the world, and we all have obstacles we must overcome.

The next step will be to have a work of fiction where the biracial protagonist is able to have a plot that is not about being biracial. This will only happen when the society in which she lives ceases to define its citizens in black and white terms. Until that day, Birdie and Cole Lee of Caucasia, and Shannon Luders-Manuel of Haight-Ashbury, will work to break the black/white binary and will assert themselves outside the box, embracing their differences yet longing to not be defined by them. In time, Birdie, Cole and Shannon will simply exist, and that will be a beautiful thing.

--Shannon Luders-Manuel

A Biracial Life in Strands

2009-10-08T14:36:00.000-07:00

Written June 16, 2009

Black girls with white mothers experience a hair journey like no other parent and child. In fact, the subject of black hair is so distressing to new white mothers that they are often sure they will fail in so vital a role as “hairdresser.” I have become an adviser to my white friends who have adopted African children, and my own hair has undergone distinct and radical changes throughout my life… almost as representing separate identities or developmental phases. These phases started off in a mother/daughter fashion, and then continued throughout my adult years in my own quest to find my identity.

This is how my hair looked fully grown out when I was a kid:

(me with my father in approximately 1984)

My mother would painstakingly comb my hair while I watched Sesame Street and put it into two huge braids that fell down my back. Then I’d go off to see my dad and he would take the braids out to let my hair fall free. It was a constant battle between them, and I would come home with beautiful flowing, but tangled, hair.

*******************************************************

Then in 3rd grade I got lice and it all got cut off. I cried and I felt like I had lost my femininity:

(me and my mom, approximately 1985)

My mom and I kept it in that afro until my freshman year of high school. No more combing the hair in front of the TV. Now it only took a matter of minutes to get the tangles out and create a style.

*********************************************************

At my request, my mom took me to a black stylist and I got my hair chemically straightened with lye:

(my mom, sister, and me in 1990)

The lye process burned my scalp while it was being applied, and after the straightening I had scabs all over my head. But I also, finally, had straight hair.

*********************************************************

After swearing off the expense and danger of lye, I started relaxing my hair at home with kits bought from the grocery store. With this bi-monthly treatment, it stayed a less bone-straight version of the original lye treatment for about 15 years. (To keep it so straight would have required daily hair iron treatments, and straight hair wasn’t in fashion for white girls):

(my friend Brian and me at the Sadie Hawkins dance in 1992 or 1993)

But my hair did have some intermittent changes along the way.

*********************************************************

During the beginning of my senior year, I got my hair braided for my senior picture. My chemically straightened hair was not as refined or polished as I wanted it to look (it was too poufy to wear down), so I figured braids would do the trick. It would also help to define me as a black woman, even though—even with the braids—I still had friends say, “What are you anyway?”

(My friend Jackie [from the Caribbean Islands] and me in 1993)

My mom and I found a black salon through a phone book, and the hairstylist came to our house to cut down on overhead costs. The braids were expensive and made my head itch, so I went back to the grocery store relaxer kits until I got braids again in 1997 for my best friend’s wedding in Iowa. I got them again after going off to college for the first time in 1998. I would find a braider by asking women on the street who had done their hair. It was usually a cousin who braided out of her home, and I would go there and sit on her living room floor for 8 hours while she did mine. Both times the itching got worse and braids were still expensive, so each time I went back to the relaxed style.

***************************************************

In 2000 I married a white Navy reserveman. For the first time in my life, I decided to document the important occasion with my own curly (but relaxed) hair:

(my sister and me at my wedding in 2000)

The white hair salon did a wonderful job on all my bridesmaids’ hair, but was at a loss of what to do with mine. I wasn’t much help, because I myself still did not know how to wear my hair down, but I figured a salon would. The picture here isn’t bad, but after an hour or so my hair turned into a big puff of disaster.

*********************************************************

After the “disaster” I did research and discovered that treating hair with (proper) lye was actually better for the hair and scalp than treating it with kits from the grocery store. So

I looked in the phone book and drove to the black part of town. Finally my hair was relaxed enough that I could actually wear it down:

(me in 2005)

By the time the above picture was taken, I had gotten divorced, gone back to school, and moved to an area that didn’t have a black part of town. Once again I was a customer of a white hair salon, but one that provided lye treatments for its few black customers.

*********************************************************

Still in school, in 2005, I got my first apartment with no housemate or husband, and I found a Puerto Rican hairstylist in a nearby town through an African friend—My first African or African-American friend since childhood. My friend got cute dreadlocks and I got my hair chopped off and learned how to make it bone straight with an iron (it took 3 hours each time):

(my mom and me in 2005)

*********************************************************

That was the first step towards growing it out curly, which the hairstylist showed me how to do: combing only while the conditioner is in the hair, using leave-in conditioner, and curl activator or pomade, and blow drying with a diffuser. My hair had been slowly thinning over the years because of the persistent relaxing process, so when it was long enough (a few months later) every bit that had been relaxed got cut off. This picture is from about 2 years after that:

(me in 2007)

It was the first time that friends and acquaintances “ooed and awed” at my hair. And it turns out the great hairstyle was there all along. I just hadn’t had known how to unleash it.

********************************************************

My last really short haircut was right before coming to grad school, and now I am slowly growing it out again to be how it was back when I was 9, before the lice. Here is its progress so far:

(me in 2009)

*********************************************************

Of course, I wear like this though:

(my sister and me in 2009)

In my new, white college town, I have actually been turned away from the owner of a hair salon, because my hair would be “frizzy for weeks” due to the rain. However, I’ve found a salon that will cut my hair even though they don’t know how to style it, which is okay because now I actually do. I’ve also, through a white friend, discovered a Puerto Rican hairstylist two hours away in Boston. After the life changing experience with the first Puerto Rican stylist, it will be worth the drive.

*********************************************************

My hair has undergone many changes over the past 32 years. I’ve wrestled with how to make it coincide with the fashion of each decade, and I’ve struggled to tame the curls that kept me from looking like my peers…. and my mother. As the only one with curly hair in my extended family, and having a distant and now deceased black father, I was truly at a loss with how to maintain my biracial existence and embrace my biracial hair. Even now, many black women are chemically treating their hair to make it look similar to the white mainstream. While I can’t judge my black peers for their hair decisions, I am pleased to find that so many black women are letting their hair be natural again. Maybe it has to do with East coast graduate school fashion, but I find I’m not the only one sporting my natural curl. In fact, I now have three black friends who do just that. It’s nice to finally see a reflection of myself in someone else’s hairstyle, and I am so thankful and grateful for my mom, and for those hours she spent with me watching Sesame Street and tackling my hair with a wide toothed comb.

(my friends Denia, Eboni, Rachel, and me in 2008).

--Shannon Luders-Manuel

No Service Salons

2009-09-30T22:16:00.001-07:00

I’ve been denied service at the two major hair salons in Amherst. Why? Because I choose to keep my hair natural. So see a black hairstylist, you say. Well, that would work except the black stylist I saw, funnily enough, didn’t know how to cut my hair either. Most likely because she is used to cutting the hair of black women who choose to have their manes chemically treated. In addition to her dry cut consisting of taking a random handful of my hair and chopping, she made judgments about my father. The only thing she knew about him was that he was black, and that he liked my hair natural, and that was enough for her.

“Did those salons really turn you away,” you ask? In the first instance, the owner of the salon where I get regular waxing took one look at my hair and said, “You don’t want me to cut it. Really.” Her reasoning? It will be frizzy for two weeks because it’s raining. As a semi-native of Seattle I am well aware that a haircut in rainy weather does not result in two weeks of frizziness. Perhaps she was confusing it with a hot iron treatment, which is probably what black clients usually come in for. Nevertheless, I decided I did not want to trust her with a pair of scissors, and even my confused expression was met with nothing but continued assertions that "you REALLY do not want me to cut your hair."

The second stylist, who I had been seeing for the past year, accosted me today as I walked in for my haircut, saying, “Because you’re growing your hair out you’ll want to find someone who knows how to cut your kind of hair" (emphasis mine). Funny, as the first time I saw her I lamented being turned away by the other salon. She was completely sympathetic to my plight, yet also terrified because she could not restyle my hair the way it was when I walked in. No sweat, I said, I just need a cut; I can style it myself. Now apparently even the cutting is too much for this seasoned stylist. Now that I’m growing my hair natural it’s the healthiest it’s ever been. But stylists seem unwilling to tackle this curly black beast in its natural state and instead send me on my way to “my people.” Tell me where my people are, and I’ll be glad to make the journey. None of my people, at least in Amherst, have successfully found a stylist.

This sounds like your typical consumer rant, but it is much more than that. It is an awareness that hairstylists are not taught how to work with natural black hair. It's an awareness that blacks and whites alike are more comfortable giving or receiving lye treatments than they are combing through hair that will remain as curly when it leaves those four walls than it was when the hair walked in. Not that blacks and whites don't love natural black hair and wish they had it for themselves. After finishing my cut today my stylist played with my ponytail puff, commenting on how lovely it was. It reminds me too disturbingly of adults who will declare your ebony beauty but not let you marry into the family. I see a change coming, at least throughout New England, where women of color are rejecting the Caucasian-inducing lye and embracing their natural beauty. Hopefully hairstylists will soon follow suit. Until then, I’ll hop from salon to salon, feigning remorse at my unruly curls, and eagerly await Chris Rock’s black hair documentary entitled, ironically, “Good Hair.”

--Shannon Luders-Manuel

Political Heads and Tails -- Two Sides of the Same Coin

2009-09-15T22:37:00.000-07:00

Just as my ethnic self includes the binary of black and white, it also includes the binary of both right wing and left wing camps. I am a Democrat, and believe strongly in Democratic values, but because I was a born again Christian for 10 years of my past and attended rather conservative churches, many of my long term friends are Republican. While their views, which sometimes include Libertarianism, often violently contradict my own, many of these friendships able to withstand this divide because of our history, our mutual respect, and our genuine desire for each of us to understand the political motivations of the other. This is not true for all the friends of my past, however. Those who use facebook as a platform to comment on the “stupidity” of “socialists” and Obama supporters in general are not people I can easily tolerate. This intolerance is twofold: 1) Because I feel that none of us should call the other camp stupid, and 2) because Obama is my biracial brother, and one who I trust as my Presidential leader.

As I read these spews against an increasing “socialist America” I become aware of the fact that Libertarians and extreme liberals really want the same things, we just view these wants through a different lens. I read 1984 about six years ago and became afraid of Bush and capitalist greed. A Libertarian acquaintance read the same book and became afraid of Democrats who he feels are thinly-veiled socialists. How can one book provide such similar reactions to such opposite truths? The answer is this: Libertarians and Socialists both want and fear the same things—not on a specific level, such as healthcare or abortion—but on the thematic level of freedom and a quest for truth. 1984 speaks to both camps because it relays a fear of power, a fear of being denied one’s rights due to the control of an outside Other. These rights differ, but the fact that we are all afraid of losing them is what makes us the same. We each accuse the opposite camp of being “lemmings,” and demand, as Coldplay demands of those they feel are not socially aware, to “Open up your eyes.” Each of us feels that those who do not share our beliefs are living in darkness and following the status quo without giving thought to what it is we are following. But how can each of these status quos be threatening our existence at the same time? How can we at once both be doomed to Conservative Capitalism and to Socialism? If both camps have their eyes closed, who has them open?

I will always believe in a woman’s right to choose and equal rights for homosexuals. I will always believe that everyone should be afforded healthcare and a good education. I will always believe that war is not the answer, and that America should embrace people from all countries, religions, and orientations. But while I support these things, I am simultaneously aware that humanity is predisposed to believe that the world is falling to pieces, and that this individual fear unites us collectively. Whether we fear Conservative Bush or Liberal Obama, we should “open our eyes” and realize that our belief in freedom is what links us to, not separates us from, our political opposition.

--Shannon Luders-Manuel

Loving Myself with Unbiased Eyes

2009-09-13T03:06:00.001-07:00

Published on Teaching Tolerance Web Site January 4, 2007

I recently had the pleasure of attending the lecture by James McBride, having read his memoir a few years ago when I was at my most-heightened search for identity. Without retaining much of the details of his life story, what has remained with me is the knowledge that someone else had experiences similar to my own. To know that he too struggled with feelings of shame over his white mother—and questions over whether he, as a black child, had been adopted—brought down the wall of alienation I felt was between me and the rest of the world.

There is often a divide, as we know, between black and white. For those of us in the middle, we often feel that we must choose one side of this divide or the other, especially in our younger years. For me, growing up predominantly African-American in a white family gave me a sense that I was interminably an outsider. My family loved me unconditionally, but it was hard to love myself with the same unbiased eyes. I felt this most acutely during sixth grade when my mother and I moved to a more diverse, and more racially divided, part of town. African-American eighth graders teased me for being so light-skinned, while my best friend and I were forbidden to continue our friendship because her white parents disapproved of my dark skin and of my cousins’ Japanese ancestry.

A few years ago I was standing at a street corner, waiting for the walk signal, when a white woman and a black man came up beside me with their young daughter on her bicycle. In those moments before we continued on our separate paths, I felt a sense of completeness like I had never experienced before. Standing there at the corner, we looked like a family. It was the one moment in my life when I did not stand out from the crowd.

It seems that biracial children these days don’t have quite the sense of alienation that was felt by those of us born a generation before. As a child I could spot another biracial person from a mile away and felt an instant connection with the individual. But now biracial children don’t seem to see me for anything other than a human being, if they even notice my presence at all. I take this as a good sign. It shows that the children of the new generation have more biracial peers than we did twenty years ago. In addition, while race relations are no way at peak form, I think we can see a marked difference in attitudes between then and now.

My struggle for identity has pretty well ceased within the past few years. I am an individual of complex origin and am proud to be so. I find it fitting that my birthday falls on United Nations Day, because I think by default of identity, those of us who incorporate two opposing races do much to bring those two races together. As an American with African, German, English, Irish, and Scottish, and Mexican heritage, I am proud to participate in the melting pot that is America.

--Shannon Luders-Manuel