Personal Narrative: My Life As A Young Black Child

From brushing out my thick hair to find secrets lying underneath it, to being expected to answer all of the slavery questions students and teachers inquire in class, I wouldn’t fully be expressing myself if my African American background was absent. My curly roots, my long brown legs, and my plate happily filled with black eyed peas, paints my beautifully black self. As a young black child, many obstacles were presented to me in ways in which failure seems like the immediate option. But through my heritage and my background, I always seemed to prevail. From becoming an innovator at such young ages to replicate items I didn't have, to becoming strongly socially connected individual, I wouldn’t be completely me without including my worthy background. As a black child I learned to embrace my roots, but not immediately. Having endless box braids with beads, and unheard of hairstyles that looked nothing like the other girls hairstyles, made me feel very unattached from society. Tears would rush down my face knowing that the days I sat in my mom's lap to get my hair braided, was a week of feeling like a social outcast. I begged for straight hair, and I wanted a perm just like my mom. Knowing that my mom was my first definition of beautiful, and my hair looked nothing like hers, hurt me the most. My curly 3C hair couldn't even find
I felt like I was being mocked. Many peers were trying to grasp as much “blackness” as the could to display for themselves. Once I began to appreciate the true values of my background, so did many others. However, this made me extremely frustrated as a teen because I spent many years trying to learn how to embrace who I was, while others had the option to pick which black vitures suited them best. And at this moment of my life, I realized that appropriating my culture was the new fashion trend. My black identity no longer authentically belonged to