"I felt ugly whenever my hair was not perfectly straight from the salon, and my hair was falling out from all those visits."
"My nonconforming pajónopened up new avenues of racism that I hadn’t encountered before, which made me proclaim my Blackness more loudly."
"I could already feel a weight being lifted from my shoulders. My pajónhad disappeared and would be no more."
"My locs have allowed me to explore depths of my Blackness that I don’t think I was afforded before. I don’t have to worry about how my hair texture presents to the Latine community or the rest of the world."