The Professor's Kitchen: Defining the Curl/Girl

The title of my blog - The Professor's Kitchen - has a double meaning for me and really defines who I am. First of all, I'm elated to finally have the opportunity to teach at the college level. This has been a dream of mine since I first declared my major in English back during my Sophomore year of college. I worked hard to get where I am today and am so proud of myself for not losing sight of my goal.

Second of all, I've always been fascinated by the dual meaning of the word 'kitchen'. There is the traditional meaning of the word that refers to a place where families gather and food is cooked and the Black English Vernacular meaning that refers to the, usually kinky, section of hair nearest the nape of the neck. Both places have impacted how I was raised and who I have become almost as much as my education.

For the sake of simplicity, let's call the kitchen (where we cooked) the "classroom" in which my home training occurred and the kitchen (where my hair is kinkiest) the "school" of hard knocks.

Home Economics: My grandmother taught me early on the value of a dollar, how to write checks, how to pay bills and how to reduce those bills by conserving engery right at her kitchen table. We also made grocery lists, planned out meals and desserts, put away groceries that were purchased and of course measured, cooked and baked.

Music: While cooking, we often sang songs to keep ourselves amused. We made up funny songs, sang traditional hymns and sometimes just hummed when the spirit moved us.

Art: Presentation is everything! I learned how to create a balanced meal and serve it so that everything was appealing to the eye before it became appealing to the pallet. Baked delicacies were often powdered or iced to perfection.

Health: Hair and personal hygiene rituals were never to be performed in the "classroom" unless it involved a hot comb on the stove.

In this way, I learned much of what I needed to know to survive out side the "classroom" from the women in it and what I didn't learn there the easy way, I learned the hard way in the "school" of hard knocks.

Early one morning as my mother prepared me for school, I sat in front of her fidgeting as I normally did whenever she had to "snap naps" in my "kitchen". This particular morning, my mother had finally had enough. After all the morning fights she'd had with me an my curls, she'd finally reached a breaking point and as I squirmed that one last time, she lifted me from the stool on which I sat and popped me on the butt with the bristle end of the hairbrush. I squealed as the bristles punctured my skin and cried out in pain; but, I learned.

Shortly thereafter, I learned how to brush and braid my hair the way I liked it. I straightened it or curled it with pride often times sleeping in awkward positions on sponge rollers to achieve the desired look. I snapped my own naps and continue to do so to this day. Now, I define myself the way that I define my curl; curvy, kinky, defined, redefined and often untamed.

"I am not my hair". I'm just a girl on a mission to be the next educator in the kitchen.