Lissa Frometa Paulino, Fenway High, Boston, 2019
Trips
Despite my dark skin and kinky black curls, I didn’t learn I was Black until I was 15 years old and living in my third country, with my seventh family.
Dominicans have such a pride that we do not like to mix with our Haitian neighbors because we believe we are superior. Years have taught us that Black people should be slaves or people of poverty, so we have made up our minds that we are not Black. We can be different colors like mulata, india, mestiza, morena, but never Black. We can be any shade of black, but not “Black.” We have always believed that the more white we look, the better. “Super Miss White” was like being a superhero. You have only to look at Sammy Sosa’s gradual lightening over the years to see these beliefs in action. My family was not as intense as Mr. Sosa; instead of our skin, we changed our hair. I got my first perm when I was 9 years old so I could look “más decente,” or at least that’s what my family used to say.
When I was 14 years old, I fell into the system of the Department of Children & Families (DCF).
I started living with a non-Spanish speaking Black foster family, and they were from Cape Verde, and they were American. I loved living in that family because it was a whole different environment, with different ideologies and traditions. In this family it wasn’t just okay to be Black, you should be PROUD of being Black.
When I first started living with my foster family, I insisted on continuing to perm my hair every 3 months. One day when I was getting my perm redone, my foster mom said, “You should stop damaging your natural hair and show off your natural Afro.” I was offended because I always believed that by showing my Afro, I was showing that I was Black, and that was not okay. I restated, “I’m not Black so I can’t do that.” I didn’t honestly think I faced discrimination, and if I did, I assumed it was because I was Latina, not because I was Black.
In my sophomore humanities class, we started reading All American Boys. This book showed me the struggles Black people face in their daily lives, including encounters with the police. It worried me that the characters facing discrimination in this book looked just like me. “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Those words jumped off the page at me. I thought of what I learned about the oppression of the people of color and how my foster mom had helped show me who I really was.
I didn’t want to remain neutral, so I created an art piece I titled, 1,096 Black Lives Lost, which explores the prevalence and impact of racism and police brutality in America. In creating this piece, I wanted to confront people with the brutality of everyday racism so they could no longer ignore its existence or their role in it. Through creating this piece, while I was feeling the wood or the cold plastic of the paint brush, I came to embrace my own Blackness and build a passion for defending Black people—people that looked like me.
Two weeks later, I went to the hair salon and I shaved off all my damaged hair. The sound of the machine and the vibration on my skull drove into my head: it was the end of my perm stage. I looked down at the pile of hair on the ground and felt like I was born again. I was a proud Afro-Latina who was ready to rock her naturally curly hair for the first time.
