A colonial legacy? [That Hair by Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida]
Most colonial powers, most of them made attempt to colonize every region of the world. When I think of modern day remnants of the colonial legacy first and foremost in my mind is Brazil. Then I think of African colonies, and while I'm away of Goa as an Asian vestige, I didn't know about Macau. I bring that up because the author of That Hair, Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida, mentions the trajectory of her forebears across Angola, Macau, and even Russia. So seeing in her own interconnected story unique details of migration, forced and voluntary, and how she reconciles the sense of belong to the oppressing and oppressed parties was something I enjoyed not only learning about, but probably my most important thing takeaway from my read.
That said, I have to talk about the writing style. The translator, Eric M.B. Becker, in his notes, does a great job of prefacing the text with an explanation of Portuguese writing style and how it's often flowery and loopy. I read his introduction and thought myself ready for the challenge. Unfortunately that nuance or tradition of storytelling hampered my experience. Some passages were extremely clear to me but other passages confused me so much. Add to that semi-regular shifting in temporality (as expressed through tenses) and really fluid segues of location switching and I lost myself in the details of the memoir.
“The story of my curly hair,” says Mila, the narrator of Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida’s autobiographically inspired tragicomedy, “intersects with the story of at least two countries and, by extension, the indirect story of the relations among several continents: a geopolitics.” Mila is the Luanda-born daughter of a black Angolan mother and a white Portuguese father. She arrives in Lisbon at the tender age of three, and feels like an outsider from the jump.
And while the book is titled That Hair, reading, few instances read like explicit frameworks in the context of hair. Hair was more often than not a periphery tool used to convey racial, social, and socioeconomic attitudes. And that's not to say that that's a negative point, because that's how microaggressions work and much of polite life is lived, but it just wasn't what I expected from the title which was likely. I expected direct instances of outright discrimination and less indirect and flowery questionings of hair and its value in the societies the author found herself in.
Would I recommend this book? Maybe. I think there are people who enjoy or at least would have an easier time with this writing style than I would. Outside of what new cultural tidbits I learned, there's not a really compelling story here. But sometimes seeing how others live is enough. 3 stars from me.
That said, I have to talk about the writing style. The translator, Eric M.B. Becker, in his notes, does a great job of prefacing the text with an explanation of Portuguese writing style and how it's often flowery and loopy. I read his introduction and thought myself ready for the challenge. Unfortunately that nuance or tradition of storytelling hampered my experience. Some passages were extremely clear to me but other passages confused me so much. Add to that semi-regular shifting in temporality (as expressed through tenses) and really fluid segues of location switching and I lost myself in the details of the memoir.
“The story of my curly hair,” says Mila, the narrator of Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida’s autobiographically inspired tragicomedy, “intersects with the story of at least two countries and, by extension, the indirect story of the relations among several continents: a geopolitics.” Mila is the Luanda-born daughter of a black Angolan mother and a white Portuguese father. She arrives in Lisbon at the tender age of three, and feels like an outsider from the jump.
Through the lens of young Mila’s indomitably curly hair, her story interweaves memories of childhood and adolescence, family lore spanning four generations, and present-day reflections on the internal and external tensions of a European and African identity. In layered, intricately constructed prose, That Hair enriches and deepens a global conversation, challenging in necessary ways our understanding of racism, feminism, and the double inheritance of colonialism, not yet fifty years removed from Angola’s independence. It’s the story of coming of age as a black woman in a nation at the edge of Europe that is also rapidly changing, of being considered an outsider in one’s own country, and the impossibility of “returning” to a homeland one doesn’t in fact know.
Would I recommend this book? Maybe. I think there are people who enjoy or at least would have an easier time with this writing style than I would. Outside of what new cultural tidbits I learned, there's not a really compelling story here. But sometimes seeing how others live is enough. 3 stars from me.
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