{"id":39458,"date":"2015-01-15T18:22:41","date_gmt":"2015-01-15T18:22:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=39458"},"modified":"2015-01-15T21:27:48","modified_gmt":"2015-01-15T21:27:48","slug":"does-it-take-work-leaving-your-hair-like-that-we-resist-sou-negra-i-am-a-black-woman-the-development-of-black-identity-for-a-negro-mestica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=39458","title":{"rendered":"\u201cDoes it take work leaving your hair like that?\u201d \u2013 We resist! Sou negra (I am a black woman)!\u201d \u2013 The development of black identity for a negro-mesti\u00e7a"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cDoes it take work leaving your hair like that?\u201d \u2013 We resist! Sou negra (I am a black woman)!\u201d \u2013 The development of black identity for a negro-mesti\u00e7a<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Black Women of Brazil<\/a>
\n2015-01-15<\/p>\n

\u201cWe resist! Negra Soy<\/em> (I am a black woman)!<\/a>\u201d (August, 2014) from Biscate Social Club<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Lia Siqueira<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nLia Siqueira<\/small><\/p>\n

\u201cYes, it takes work. Prejudice beats us, but we resist.\u201d That\u2019s what I said when a lady on the bus asked: \u201cDoes it take work leave your hair like that?\u201d I understood what she wanted to know. But what suffocated me at that moment needed to be said. I didn\u2019t want to exchange secrets to give freshness and volume to the hair. I didn\u2019t want to speak of aloe<\/a>, bepantol<\/em><\/a> (1) or the potential for a good hydration schedule. Until then, I had been giving the aesthetic responses to that type of question. Those responses were expected by those who had their curiosity aroused by my \u201cpetulant<\/a>\u201d hair. However, there comes a time that all we need to transcend the aesthetic question of resistance \u2013 to communicate the subversion of our blackness and assume responsibly, our place \u2013 to show what is most valuable was born from the roots on our heads. The intimacy of looking at our roots without relaxing, which infests them, and celebrating our heads, our ideas.<\/p>\n

Cultivating a relationship of love with our black hair and taking from ourselves the most powerful us. I don\u2019t mean some natural mix ups provoked by the texture of the curls. I speak of what makes it difficult for us, the looks, the ridicule, judgments, the racism…<\/p>\n

…I am the daughter of a white woman and a black man. I was born of the mixture so hypocritically celebrated by the gringos<\/em> in this our pseudo-racial democracy. I came into the world like this: mixed up in this being-not being black. With \u201cmorena\u201d (brown\/light brown) skin, in this Brazil<\/a> where todas as gatas s\u00e3o \u201cpardas\u201d<\/em> (all the cats are \u201cbrown\u201d) (2), \u201ctoasted ones\u201d, \u201cmulatas\u201d, \u201cbrown colored\u201d, but not \u201cnegras\u201d<\/a>. In my home, I learned not to reject blackness or to whiten myself. I was loved with my curly hair, by my white mother \u2013 there I was me and I was secure. But socialization comes, it is inevitable. With it, we are run over by filters of prejudices. The incomprehension of classmates at school quickly became racism. As in the beginning of the poem by Victoria Eugenia Santa Cruz Gamarra<\/a>, \u201cMe gritaron negra\u201d (they screamed negra at me), I retreated before the laughter because of my cabelo crespo<\/em> (curly\/kinky hair). Before the age of thirteen I was using straighteners and relaxers<\/a>…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cDoes it take work leaving your hair like that?\u201d \u2013 We resist! Sou negra (I am a black woman)!\u201d \u2013 The development of black identity for a negro-mesti\u00e7a Black Women of Brazil 2015-01-15 \u201cWe resist! Negra Soy (I am a black woman)!\u201d (August, 2014) from Biscate Social Club Lia Siqueira Lia Siqueira \u201cYes, it takes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,395,83,21,125,8],"tags":[19072,17123,19070],"class_list":["post-39458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-brazil","category-latincarib","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","tag-biscate-social-club","tag-black-women-of-brazil","tag-lia-siqueira"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39458\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}