Hands in My Hair

    I am taking a creative writing class right now. I love my creative writing class. :)
In my first semester attending creative writing class I read or heard somewhere from someone (yes, very specific info here) that you should write about what you know. This advise made sense to me and I often think of that when I write. I have chosen fiction as my writing genre.
 
   So for the online work shop we got the insturctions to write in third person limited omnicent poit of view, and to research our stories through the Internet or through observing life to make it believable. I decided to start my short story with a man of African decent waiting for the bus. All of a sudden he feels someone touching his hair and turns around to find a stranger, a woman, who has just touched his hair.

    Now, I choose to start my story like this for many reasons. One of them is that this is something I know. I have over the years had countless strangers touch my hair. Some have actually asked me if they could touch my hair, like people I barely knew in school or friends of friends. Some have tried to do it without me noticing, I sat on the bus a few years ago with my daughter and I could feel somone lightly pulling at one of my curls. And I could list so many more occasions and events when my hair has been subject for people's touches.

   So this week we recieved the feedback on our short stories, and the feeback I recieved was all over the place. But, a majority of the people commented that this scene was not believable, not because of the way it was written, but because "people in Sweden don't touch stranger's hair" (this not said literarly, but it was basically what was said). Someone stated that it would be believable if it was set in another time (my story is set in present day) and in a small village, not in a bigger city in Sweden. Honestly, this made me laugh. People had set views on what happens and does not happen to other people.

   So I turned to Facebook to find out how many of my friends of African decent have actually been through this. Some of them I already know have because we have talked about it. And I have gotten replies and comments form people that I didn't know have experienced this.

   I wonder why it's so hard to believe that strangers touch your hair when it has never happened to you? I think even though Sweden is a pretty diverse country there's still a big gab between "native Swedes" and "Swedes of African decent". Our curls are still rare in so many ways, and they also exclude us and make us feel different in so many ways. Not only when it comes to hair care and knowledge thereof, but also just by the way we are treated by strangers.