I Have Hair To Take The Gloom Away
When I was pregnant with my first daughter, I worked at the South End Branch of the Ferguson Library in Stamford, CT, and read stories to preschoolers in the Head Start program. Once a week, I greeted them at the door—they stood in single file, excited and awaiting entrance.
One of the reasons I love children's books is that there's always an invitation to loosen and lighten up, be poured into, be lulled into a place of deeper reflection—to see yourself in mid-grapple. For that reason, happy to be nappy is much more than a children's story.
It is a love offering from bell hooks, now a favorite literary ancestor. The story touches on the sore spots where my little Black girl self still needs soothing. Seeing all those little ‘girlpies’ for the first time almost twenty-five years ago with lovely brown skin in plenty of hues was a thing. Go ahead, see for yourself. Take a look, and you will see that the Black girl magic spirit is beautifully embodied in their drawn bodies. My eyes, soul and entire little girl self-drank in the imagery.
The tug at the tenderness, though, was the depiction of the little girls with descriptors like ‘kinks’ and ‘nappy’ paired with others like ‘soft’ and ‘free.’ Hair with a special magic that could take the gloom away? Nope. That wasn't what I associated with my natural hair. Not then at twenty-five and not before then either.
Instead, I absorbed messages that made me think of the word ‘nappy’ with complete disdain. When I was younger, there was nothing worse than having ‘the N-word naps.’ If someone said that to you—it 'mos def was an ouch, one-hundred. Back then, it wasn't ‘shade,’ but a ‘dis’ with a yo-mama kinda feel—fighting words, straight up. In the eighties and nineties, being ‘happy to be nappy’ was not a feeling in my wheelhouse. It simply was not it.
When I was growing up, I had one friend with locs. I met her in first grade at the Afrocentric charter school, Uhuru Sasa, in Brooklyn. They were short and kept compactly in a knitted beanie-style kufi. Much later, when we met again in our first year of high school, they had grown long, and before we graduated, she cut them off and experimented with loose, natural hairstyles. Only one other friend in high school wore her natural hair in lovely box braids that curled on the ends. She only pressed it out once in my four years of knowing her. For prom.
I was not aware then, and I am not sure they were consciously trying to do it, but Ife and Kasha modeled our hair's versatility for me. I wasn't into it, though. They had a type of self-love I didn't. It was all before various hair products for curls and protective styles were invented. There was no language like 4c hair. No YouTube videos showing you how to detangle, moisturize, and care for your hair. No wet brush. Crown Act, what? I didn't know any Black girls who described their hair as having natural curls. It would be about three decades before our country implemented policies prohibiting discrimination against texturism. Tracee Ellis Ross' Hair Tales wasn't a thing.
Just about each and every one of my friends was doing what I was doing: perming hair. I sometimes wore extensions and liked them. I didn't seem to have the same repulsion or aversion to my natural hair when it grew out of braids, but when it grew out of a perm, I would want it to ‘go back.’ Quick-fast and in a hurry. I was put off by my texture peeping out.
By the time I became a mom at twenty-five, I had already cut my hair off twice and was wearing it shorter than a TWA (teenie weenie afro). Years prior, I met two Black women at the summer McNair program at Michigan State who looked so fierce with their hair styled that way. At nineteen, I was ready, excited, and nervous to do what I couldn’t at fifteen. I cut it off a few weeks into the program. But even then, I had hair envy. I remember being dissatisfied while trying to fall in love and discover my hair texture. I wanted the hair I initially rejected. Why couldn't I put product in my hair and make lovely, distinct, tight curls? Why was mine straight and wavy? Did I even have naps?
Even though I was still in the swirl of comparison and trying to parse out beliefs about my hair I had been taught to believe from what I was learning to feel, by the time I had my first daughter and began reading storybooks to her, I had more confidence in my hair. Over the years, reading happy to be nappy to my three daughters, Nailah Sojourner, Zahra Sage, and Saida Sincere, remained an opportunity to chip away at the messages that kept and keep me in conflict, although less so.
bell helped me see and embrace myself, especially my preschooler self, who feared her hair wouldn't grow. Those same woes became real for me as a mom of a first baby child whose hair rubbed off in the back (some called it a smile). I carried so much worry about her hair and fretted about whether she’d be teased later on if her hair didn't grow in. I compared her to her cousins on her dad's side. Three moms of baby girls sitting together, all three baby girlpies, mine having the least hair. Me feeling so raw.
In an entire book about nappy hair, from the title to the content, bell simultaneously exposed the root of the ache in my heart: I still couldn't see myself. Just like that, she invited me deeper into reflection—not about the politics of Black hair in an abstract way—but in a ‘this is what I'm still grappling with, I just don’t love how I came here, and can you still believe it,’ kind of way?
Gratefully, the words on the page were set up to soothe. She had named my hair “a halo, a crown, a covering for heads that are round.” Almost at the end of the book, fourteen girlpies are drawn, holding hands all in a circle, feeling “Happy with hair all short and strong. Happy with locks that twist and curl. Just all girl happy! Happy to be nappy hair!"
I thank her for her medicine, so full of hope and possibility for Black girl healing.
It's the hope you can wear like your juiciest and most nourishing lip balm. It's a form of surrender–to your very own self. It's like the best-weighted blanket. You can lay the words over you, lay yourself into kindness.
It’s a prayer, a mantra. At forty-nine, I chant:
"I have hair to take the gloom away."
"I have hair to take the gloom away."
"I have hair to take the gloom away."
And I believe it more and more.
-Brandon Hutchinson
Brandon Hutchinson is a seeker. Attracted to the sweetness in life and the goodness in others, she often finds calm and peace with her indoor plants, trees, and garden beauties, which offer her repeated/tremendous lessons on surrender, healing, and stick-to-it-ness. She is a community builder, spaceholder, facilitator, educator, and radical believer in the value of the pause. She’s finding writing again.