Hair & Poetry V

I saw a clip with Zora Howard performing Bi-Racial Hair a long time ago, can't even remember when I saw it for the first time. This was a powerful poem that earned her a standing ovation, and since then she has continued to thrive in her poetry.

I wanted to add the Bi-Racial Hair poem as a clip, but it can't be embedded :( So to view it click on this link.

Bi-Racial Hair

by

Zora Howard

I have bi-racial hair

Pantene Pro-V waves on the top

Easy to style, comb, rock-

Until-I encounter my naps,

I’m not talking about those-cute detangle with the spray naps.

I’m talking about those, slave naps, like,

No comb, brush, or man can handle the kind of naps I got- like,

No way you are touching my hair-naps like

Back 10 feet up, or we can dance naps

Those naps like-

DAMN!

I have bi-racial hair,

Those smooth and silk rafts hanging all through my mane,

Until you get to the back, and encounter the jungle, in which you can find Tarzan and Jane.

In the front you forget and relax in the pleasure,

Until you get to the back and remember pain

Baby hair slicked back with that good 4 dollar pomade,

That goes with roots and tangles,

Soaked with that same olive oil; mixed with that spaghetti sauce momade.

I have bi-racial hair,

Combs run freely through my fine breezy, just to the part, the most you can make,

Until it gets to the back and

Breaks.

I have bi-racial hair

Like-

The only thing my mother could put it in was 2 big braids,

And sometimes that was to much,

So she left half undone.

I was in the mirror, I was in the mirror,

Convincing my self I looked just like a dark-skinned Alicia Keys

I have bi-racial hair,

because I have bi-racial blood.

I’m not talking about that-cute they met then fell in love, blood

I’m talking about that- slaved raped six times by the master,

Birthing 6 mixed babies, later hung blood

I’m talking about that cross burning in the mud, blood

And you call me a mud blood,

Slit my rist,

my blood does not excrete in black and white.

I drean in verse and in red

Like what drained from Emmit Tills’ lips when he was killed for breaking down color lines

Bi-racial who surcomes to the abuse from her peers in her middle school,

Those whose who constantly called me an Oreo

Well she’s not white, its more like Reese’s cookie, mixed breed or a Milano

That’s what it is a reverse Milano

I AM NOT A FUCKING COOKIE!

My roots are deep too

my bi-racial roots are not blind

or more than cotton soft

cause my blood were in the sun, picking cotton too

a thousand times discrated for my race

a thousand time discrated from my history y’all never get

let textbooks be your truth

and sprinkle the ashes of your history into streams

I dream for a time and place where

maybe y’all all accept me

maybe we need to wake up again and remember a morning of you

like something new

baby I’ll be green cause my people drove there

you people drove me there

with my tender heart

tender head

and my bi-racial hair

He was a teenager when she wrote and performed this powerful poem. Now she's a grown woman with a powerful voice.