Beyond the Essay with Laura Jiménez Morales

Laura Veronica Jiménez Morales was born in Cuernavaca, Morelos, México. She is a fourth-generation immigrant and writes about her experiences on both sides of the border. Other subjects she has written about previously include race, gender-based violence and media and popular culture. She is currently pursuing an MFA in nonfiction writing at Washington University in St. Louis. Her essay titled Hair was featured on the last edition of Ellipsis is a personal reflection on Laura’s relationship with her curly hair, exploring the impact of societal standards, family influences and racial associations. The narrative explores the racial history associated with different hair textures in Mexican culture, highlighting the negative stereotypes attached to curly hair and the internalized racism that led to her dislike of her own natural hair.

Tolu Daniel: First, I want to say thank you for agreeing to join us on Ellipsis and sharing that beautiful essay with us. I want to begin with a question about the impetus to write this essay itself. How did your perceptions of beauty and self-worth evolve as you faced criticism for your curly hair?

Laura Veronica Jiménez Morales: Hi Tolu, thank you so much for this! I think my views on beauty were to a large extent influenced by Mexican culture, which, being less individualistic than U.S. culture, tends to conceive beauty in a way that isn’t necessarily about standing out, but rather about not being too different from everyone else. There is a type of racial mixture that our culture has enshrined as being the “ideal” and having curly hair has placed me outside of this beauty standard. For a long time, the only Mexican person with hair like mine that I knew of was my mother, who hated her own hair. So I supposed part of me internalized this negative perception of it, while another part resented just being so different from everyone else. 

TD: The politics of hair and race is one that has endlessly fascinated me since childhood. In Chimamanda Adichie's Americanah for instance, she explores the role of natural hair and the cultural and societal expectations surrounding it, particularly for black women. Adichie like you in your essay highlighted issues related to beauty standards  and self acceptance in her book. My next question is about why it seems there is a lot of focus on the hair as a motif when we write about race.

LM: I feel like hair can symbolize so many things! It can mean strength and power like in the bible, it can also mean freedom, beauty, and even have spiritual connotations depending on the place. In some cultures people cut or shave their hair after the loss of a loved one, or as part of certain religious rituals. Hair cutting has also been used to subjugate others. So I feel that even when one is writing or talking about hair, it’s never just about hair. 

TD: Yes, I agree with that. Hair as a political tool. How a particular hair looks or is styled as an excuse to expel certain (read Black) people from certain educational and workspaces. We have seen it all too often. My final question is only slightly tangential to the topic of hair. Do you think it is possible to think of a world where hair is not weaponized against minority groups.

LM: I hope so! At least I am glad to see so many more people talking about that now, and some laws and regulations being enacted in certain places in the U.S. Will it ever completely go away? Probably not. But I think being able to talk about it openly, and to even be able to identify it as an issue is already a step forward. I was at a book presentation last year and one of the authors had written a children’s book about hair, and about how important it was for little girls to learn to love their hair. The author was quite young, and she talked about her experience growing up as one of the few Black people in a mostly white community, and how difficult it had been to learn to love her own hair under those circumstances. But she really credited her parents with always telling her she was beautiful and helping her see the beauty in her own hair. I thought it was so moving because I never had anyone tell me that when I was a child, and there weren’t any books about it or anything. It made me think about how things could have been so different for me, and how hopefully they will be at least somewhat different for little girls now. I think sometimes it's difficult to envision a future where the things that make us different won’t be used as weapons against us, but at least we can envision one where we won’t use them as weapons against ourselves.

Thank you so much for joining us on this edition of Beyond the Essay. And more importantly, thank you for being so generous with your answers and contributing to Ellipsis. We can't wait to read more of your work.

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