My hair is brown.\u00a0 My hair is free.\u00a0 My hair has not always been free.\u00a0 When I was five, I was moved from foster care in Virginia to an orphanage in Washington, D.C.\u00a0 Immediately, my hair was sheared with an electric clipper.\u00a0 I was humiliated.\u00a0 I looked like a boy.\u00a0 As my humiliation intensified, so did my determination.\u00a0 One day, my hair would be free.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When I was\u00a0ten, I was moved to a different home.\u00a0 My first question-“Will you let my hair be free?”\u00a0 The answer -“Yes.”\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0With each passing year, my\u00a0hair grew about six inches.\u00a0 By the time I was\u00a0the tenth grade, my hair was below my waist.\u00a0 My hair was finally free.\u00a0 My best friend, Jude, had free hair too.\u00a0 We would meet at her house to iron our hair before\u00a0we went\u00a0to school.\u00a0 The straighter we ironed our hair, the longer our hair appeared to be.\u00a0 When Jude got her driver’s license, we started making trips to Georgetown to shop the boutiques.\u00a0 We bought Mexican peasant tops, embroidered with bright colored flowers.\u00a0 We bought leather purses, boots, and belts, and silver jewelry.\u00a0 We were so free.\u00a0 The last time I saw Jude, her hair was still long, but she wasn’t free.\u00a0 I cut my hair five years ago. \u00a0My daughter cried. \u00a0I am still free.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My hair is brown.\u00a0 My hair is free.\u00a0 My hair has not always been free.\u00a0 When I was five, I was moved from foster care in Virginia to an orphanage in Washington, D.C.\u00a0 Immediately, my hair was sheared with an electric clipper.\u00a0 I was humiliated.\u00a0 I looked like a boy.\u00a0 As my humiliation intensified, so … Continue reading Hair<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":658,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions\/658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}