Friday, April 8, 2011

Guest Contributor: Author and Illustrator, Laura Lacámara

I am so delighted to end this week with a guest post by the talented author and illustrator, Laura Lacámara. You may know her from one (or both!) of her books: Floating on Mama's Song and The Runaway PIggy.


HOW MY HAIR SUFFERED IN THE TRANSLATION FROM  
CUBAN LATINA TO SUBURBAN AMERICAN
by Laura Lacámara

My dark brown Cuban head of hair made its way to blonde suburban southern California in the late 1960s.

I was starting third grade, and I had by then acquired a reasonable mastery of the spoken English language -- especially considering I had been thrown into it cold just two years prior. That burning shame I had felt every time I had been pulled out of my first grade class and sent to the dreaded trailer to learn English as a Second Language had by then cooled and been all but forgotten.

Now all I wanted was to blend in, to be like everyone else. But, one obstacle stood squarely in my path: the color of my hair.


I became obsessed. “Mamá,” I would cry to her every day after school. “My hair’s so dark. I wish I had light hair like the other girls in my class.”

Now don’t get me wrong, my mother had done a lot up to that point to keep our family’s culture alive. Not only did she encourage my brother and I to speak Spanish at home, she also made a point of teaching us to read and write in Spanish. Thanks to my mother, I grew up being bilingual and biliterate.

And growing up, Mamá always cooked traditional Cuban dishes -- she taught me to cook some of them, too! (OK, she cooked with lard, but everyone did back then.)

So, I know she was just trying to be supportive. Maybe she struggled with her own inner shame. Maybe she felt isolated and helpless in our small suburban apartment, away from her country and her people. Maybe she also wished she could just blend in. Or, maybe I just wore her down, until she was willing to do whatever it took to make me happy (and to stop my whining!). Whatever the reason, Mamá finally cracked under the pressure.

“I will lighten your hair,” she announced. “Just a little bit.”

I was thrilled! Now the kids at school would like me and want to be my friend. At last, here was my ticket to becoming “normal.”

My mother sat me down and colored my hair using a permanent-dye that (she promised!) would turn my hair a light shade of brown. But, she must have accidentally left the dye in too long…

When I unwrapped the towel and looked in the mirror, I saw a redhead staring back at me. My hair was the color of the oranges in the groves that surrounded our sprawling apartment complex.

I was shocked and horrified -- especially when the realization hit me that I would have to face the kids at school the next day!

Naturally, all my classmates stared at me and asked questions. I came up with a lame story about swimming in an over-chlorinated pool. Some kids seemed to buy the story about the chlorine, but I was mortified nonetheless.

So, from one day to the next, I went from feeling different and just wanting to blend in, to being shockingly different and drawing total attention to myself! It was traumatic. On the “shame meter,” the sting of the ESL trailer experience registered as a mosquito bite, while the hair-dying fiasco was more like being stung by a swarm of wasps!

But, in time, my initial shock wore off, and, before long, my mother found a solution to restoring my well-being.

She dyed my hair once again, this time to match my original color. My dark brown Cuban head of hair was back. And, though I had to let go of the dream of ever becoming a popular blonde suburban girl, I was greatly relieved to be myself again.

In an interesting twist of fate, my own daughter came home from school one day last week crying, “Mama, I wish my hair was brown. I’m the only blonde girl in the class.”

My adopted daughter, who is Caucasian with blonde hair and blue eyes, attends a first grade Dual Language class in a Los Angeles Unified school, where about 85 percent of the children are Latino.

I told my daughter that I had experienced the feeling of being the “different” one in my class, too. “It’s OK, mija,” I assured her, trying to seize the opportunity that my own mother unwittingly let slip through her fingers, “You have beautiful hair, and you are perfect just the way you are.”



Laura Lacámara is the award-winning author of Floating on Mama’s Song / Flotando en la canción de mamá, which was chosen as a Junior Library Guild Selection for Fall 2010 and is a Tejas Star Book Award Finalist for 2011 - 2012.

The story, Floating on Mama’s Song, was inspired by Laura’s mother, who had been an opera singer in Cuba. The book was illustrated by Yuyi Morales and published by HarperCollins.

To learn more about Laura Lacámara, visit her website: LauraLacamara.com

9 comments:

lisarenata said...

Aw, I love this story. Thank you for sharing it with us.

angelica perez said...

The issue of hair is so powerful in our culture. I love reading these stories. The hope is that we'll be wise enough to not pass on or perpetuate those feelings and perceptions attached to hair color or texture, and empower our girls to feel good the way they are.

Tracy said...

That's a beautiful story - I really enjoyed it. In my case, I wanted to have long hair because my mother always kept it cut short. (I was a tomboy and wouldn't take care of it, so she had her reasons.) --- Still, I felt jealous seeing the other girls braid each other's hair.

Thanks for sharing this!

Clementina said...

Hmmmmm, I was a third grader in So Cal in the '60's too! (And like, a TOTAL Valley Girl, even.) And though I never stuck out like a sore thumb when it came to my hair color, I had the arms and legs of a changuita [a monkey]. I wanted them to be blonde like my friends!
Lindas ilustraciones y cuento.
Felicidades!

Hal Martin said...

Thanks so much to the folks who read the article & commented!

Laura's website did not come through on the blog as a clickable link.

Here it is:

http://www.lauralacamara.com/

- H ♥ ☮

(husband of Laura L.)

Monica said...

Thanks, Hal, for pointing out the link wasn't working! I have fixed it now.

Laura's article was excellent. And many of our readers have been able to relate to it...

Thanks to you both!

Lee Wind said...

This was beautiful - I love how you took the story full circle. There's a picture book in this, Laura. (I'm thinking of how some beautiful picture books come full circle, like Jacqueline Woodson's SHOW WAY)
Namaste and thank you for sharing this,
Lee

Terry Lim Diefenbach said...

Laura! What a story! In my case my mom insisted on giving me a permanent to make me look 'not so Chinese'! Thanks for sharing!

Julie Musil said...

Laura, what a beautiful story. My husband was born in the US, but lived in Mexico during his early years since his mom took the kids to Mexico to stay with family while his dad stayed in the states and earned money. When my husband returned, he only knew Spanish. He can relate to how you felt about the hair!

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