Zora Howard is the youngest poet to win the Urban Word NYC Grand Slam finals at the age of 13, she came to my attention when she performed her poem called “Bi-Racial Hair” which was a part of a documentary of the same name and won an Emmy Award. Zora uses her platform and her voice to give a voice to those who do not have one.
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 mullato
That’s what it is a reverse mulatto
I AM NOT A FUCKING COOKIE OR A BITCH!
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.
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