NaturallyCurly: What has been the most memorable story you’ve heard at the Curly Monologues?
Stephanie: All of the stories are memorable. So many authentic and passionate people have flocked to this event and amazingly creative people have taken to the stage! Our last theme was Growing Up Curly. We had storytellers of all ages, and a variety of performances. There was a beautiful story a young woman told of a grandmother who made her French braid her curly hair out of sight. She demonstrated this onstage, asking other Curlies to come onstage with her and take turns doing her hair. Another amazing presentation was by a mother, a brilliant writer by the way, whose greatest wish for her young daughter is for her to embrace her natural hair. In her story she told hilarious vignettes of all the research she’s done shopping in the hair care aisle, and how it inspired her to reach back into the archive of history and also examine pop culture to try to inspire her child to be proud of what she looks like. So powerful and so creative. We keep finding that talking about embracing your inner curly is really the story of the search for self.
Suzanne: One young lady, an actress, wrote and performed a hilarious and heartfelt piece from the perspective of her little girl self, wondering what life would be like without her kinky, curly hair and then realizing it wouldn’t be as much fun. Another great story was told and performed by a woman who, as an adolescent with a head of “unruly” blonde locks, was called “Witchiepoo” by her classmates. She decided to embrace her unusualness later in her life as a performer/musician/songwriter and ended her performance playing a ukulele and juggling oranges–Free to be herself!
Jonathan: There are two: one woman talking about how her father clearly must have wanted daughters with straight hair, not curly hair, and how he used to say things like, “can’t you do something with that hair?!” as if it was something she should be ashamed of. That had a huge effect on her life, and her saying how it took her another 35 years to be in synch with her hair. The other was an African-American woman who after hearing the stories of white girls with curly hair, remarked that she never knew that white girls had suffered any similar experiences to hers. That showed me the power of storytelling and the bridging and connecting of people.
