Raceless : In Search of Family, Identity, and the Truth About Where I Belong (9780063009493) by Lawton Georgina

Author:Lawton, Georgina
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

7

Did You Lose Your Comb?

“Just a little burn,” the hairdresser said. “But look how pretty it is. Wow, girl, you’ve got the white-girl swing!”

—CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE, Americanah

ON ONE OF MY FINAL DAYS IN VIETNAM, I FOUND MYSELF in a small house among evergreen hills surrounded by women I did not know and bundles and bundles of freshly chopped hair. I looked on in amazement as nine hundred pounds of ponytails swirled around my ankles on the floor like thick black snakes. The air was damp with the smell of hair, it was everywhere. Four women sat side by side, legs crossed, on a linoleum kitchen floor, sorting and counting the bundles, occasionally rising to weigh each one on an electronic scale close by. Two others perched on a low blue sofa opposite, waiting to sell their hair; they would have it cut off and hand it over in a transaction that would last just a few seconds. I’d contacted Vietnam’s largest hair factory so I could write a piece tracing the hair extension journey from scalp to shelf during some free time on my press trip. It was an article I had more than a little personal interest in, because I’d spent years wearing hair extension weaves myself, yet I had no idea where they’d come from. I began sourcing extensions from Peckham at age seventeen, taking the forty-minute train ride from my house in Sutton with a friend who bought packets of long, straight brown hair. Peckham was always the cheapest hair-buying option, followed by Brixton, followed by Mitcham, which was just ten minutes from Sutton, but which we did not frequent because prices increase the whiter the area. My foray into the world of weave was birthed in Peckham. I wandered into a black hair salon near Rye Lane and found a nimble-fingered Nigerian woman chewing gum indolently, who installed a straw-like, corn-colored, Beyoncé–circa–“Baby Boy” twenty-four-inch number. I remember going to sixth form the next day to present something in front of the whole school and feeling that my lustrous new head of hair felt totally alien on my scalp. But I would keep that look for another four years, and gradually, I began to look forward to the transformative process that came from sourcing Rapunzel-esque locks in pockets of south London, and of course, to the final completed look, which I viewed as far more chic than my natural head of curls. A weave had a transformative, uplifting effect; I felt more attractive, more sophisticated, and I (foolishly) believed that I blended in more among family and friends.

I’d met owners and brothers Nguyen and Phan, whose client-facing names were “Jack” and “Tom” (lol), for a tour of both their factory and a village from which they apparently sourced their hair. After a quick exchange of pleasantries in their sorting office in Hanoi, where I’d been given a complimentary bundle of unprocessed curly hair (which I actually still have in a drawer somewhere), I’d climbed into the back of their car for a journey of almost two hours and enjoyed a lengthy nap.

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