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• 1 2019-04-27T03:43:54-07:00 Touches of Hair in Sofia Samatar's "The Clan of the Claw" 13 plain 2019-05-01T12:08:36-07:00

  An elderly woman approaches me in the park. Your hair, it must be naturally curly. What’s your nationality?” She reaches to touch my hair. I flinch. She is taken aback, hurt. The monster destroys all innocence, all fellow feeling.

  
  The above quote comes from Sofia Samatar’s “The Clan of the Claw” to describe an encounter she had with an elderly lady. The overall story focuses on the experience of Samatar trying to find her people, or the group of people with similar experiences as her. She makes references to significant figures who were outcasts, and she comments on the similarities with their experiences. However, she doesn’t want to overshadow their experience by taking them over as her own.
  
  
  The main commentary in the story focuses on finding your place, but the above section focuses on her interaction with the elderly lady to show that simple interactions can have unconscious prejudice within them. The act of touching someone’s hair is now considered a micro-aggression.
  
  
  A microaggression is a comment or action that subtly and often unconsciously or unintentionally expresses a prejudiced attitude toward a member of a marginalized group (Merriam-Webster). To fully understand why touching a person’s hair is a microaggression, it is important to know the significance of hair to identity.
  
   
                                                                  The importance of hair to identity
  
  Hair is a marker for identity when thinking about African and African American hair because it provides insight into a person’s identity and holds cultural significance. Black Hair has had evolved throughout time with the changes happening as a result of colonialism, the slave trade, and assimilation. Rumeana Jahangir from BCC News wrote a blog focusing on the historical importance of hair to black history. It showed that black hair was initially used to identify different tribes or stages of life.
  
  
  The slave trade and later the segregation would cause African Americans to straighten their hair to fit into the norm of society. These individuals also saw changing their hair as a method for becoming more accepted in society.  The civil rights movement emphasized the importance of embracing the natural kinks of African and African American, and the focus on natural has reemerged into the mainstream in today’s world.
  
  
  Samatar is not the only author who uses hair as an identity marker in her works, and many speculative fiction authors of African descent play with the concept of hair. Tomi Adeyemi and Nnedi Okorafor are other authors who focus on hair, and the importance that it plays when defining an individual, especially Africans and African Americans.
  
  In Children of Blood and Bone, Tomi Adeyemi creates a world where white hair on dark skin is the identity marker, and these individuals are treated differently in society solely based on the identity associated with the color of their hair. In Binti, Nnedi Okorafor plays with the idea of hair having ties to cultural background by making her main character Himba woman. All these works show that hair holds a deep significance in the identity of a person and how they move about in the world.
  
  
  As people move through life, they are constantly aware of what makes them different from everyone else. While the most prominent factor that people notice first is skin color, hair is the second most prominent factor. The difference between these two identity markers is that people are comfortable with touching someone’s hair without permission whereas it is taught earlier not to touch another person’s body. There are many reasons why a person should not touch another’s hair, and Samatar’s interaction with the elderly provides a good starting point for addressing this microaggression.
  
   
  Why is touching someone’s hair a microaggression?
  • Touching someone’s hair is a microaggression because the act identifies the person as different. People with hair that fits norm rarely have people asking to touch their hair or question their ethnicity. The touching of the hair makes the person who has curly hair feel like an outsider. The person doing the touching has the power in the moment to out a person as different.
  • The act also demonstrates an intrusion of personal space. In Samatar’s story, she flinches from the act. In her case, the flinch is an unconscious reaction. Yet, the underlying assumption is there that someone must have something else in them to have hair that is not straight.
  • The people who want to touch the hair feel as though they have some right to be able to touch the hair like it is a museum exhibit. The act in a way is exoticizing the person who has the different hair. In a society when people are expected to conform to certain image, it can be jarring for a person to bring attention to the fact that there is a difference in people.
  • For people who have constantly adapted their hair for the dominant culture, it can emphasize the fact that society still does not find their attributes as normal. Under the surface of the action, it holds the inequality shared between the dominant culture and the Africans and African Americans living with their hair.
• 1 2019-04-27T03:59:31-07:00 Embracing cultures: ready or not? 9 plain 2019-05-01T11:53:13-07:00 Attending college or university is a time where students begin to expand their horizon past the ideologies that they have learned from their family. Student are interacting with various students from a multitude of backgrounds. In these cases when learning about other students and situations, people can choose to embrace the different cultures or choose to stay in their own cultural bubble.
  
  ►University Students in Binti
  
  Nnedi Okorafor’s 2014 novella Binti presents a university where students from different cultural backgrounds come together and enjoy learning about each other. The students headed for Oozma University are away from societal influences contribute negative stereotypes and negative opinions about others.
  
   The ship brings the students closer together because they take the time to learn about each other. The main character comes from the Himba culture, so she has distinct identity markers such as her hair, the use of Otjize, and her anklets.
  
   Throughout the beginning of the novel, the dominant culture ridicules her culture, but her shipmates headed to Oozma University make her feel comfortable by learning. She starts to realize that the other students are her people even though they have cultural differences.
  
  Binti even mentions that the “commonalities shined brighter,” and the student’s advanced interest in math and other subjects become more important than where they came from. Readers see how the sharing of cultures, and the attempt at understanding another culture can build connections and relationships. People can bond together once they have the trust of knowing that they can be their most authentic self.
  
  ►University Students in Lagoon
  
  A contrast is shown with the students in Binti and the students in Nnedi Okorafor’s novel Lagoon. The Lagoon students are stuck in their own ideologies, and they do not want to understand the cultural difference between themselves and the Nigerians in the media.
  
  The students look at the situation that the Nigerians experiences and immediately began to other the people. No time was taken to understand the culture or the cultural significance of the invasion that Nigeria faced. The students felt as though the situation did not affect them because Africa is only a distant connection to them.
  
   However, it is feasible that these students decide to stay in their ideologies rather than learning about other cultures because they are not exposed to other cultures in the setting presented to readers. All the students who are interacting are African American, Pre-Med college students.
  
  Having students that are cut from the same cloth makes it difficult to see them embrace cultural differences. An exposure to more cultures fosters more cultural appreciation in people. Talking about what on does not understand about a group of people can help eliminate some of the stereotypes and othering that happens.
  
   The students in Lagoon did not have the opportunity with their college or university experience to embrace various cultures, but the students in Binti bonded over learning about the different cultures.