"Jaja's African Hair Braiding" is a tragicomedy. Once again, Jocelyn Bioh brings another thorny issue to the stage. In "School Girl; Or, The African Mean Girls Play," Bioh tackled colorism and Eurocentric concepts of feminine beauty. In "Jaja's African Hair Braiding," Bioh sheds light on immigration.
Jaja is the proprietor of Jaja's African Hair Braiding in Harlem. Her hair braiders are catty, gossipy, fussy, and shape-tongued women dealing with their ebbs and flows of everyday life. However, their sisterhood and compassion for each other reveal themselves in a crisis that befalls Jaja and, by extension, them all.
Halfway through the play, Jaja finally appears. Regally attired and happy because it's her wedding day, Jaja comes to the shop to happily share with the women, "The next time you see me, ladies, I'll be Mrs. Jaja Jacobson."
Jaja is marrying Jacobson to secure a green card, give her high school valedictorian daughter the status of a Dreamer, and give her a shot at the American Dream. As a successful small business owner, Jaja is revered and respected among her braiders, a group of African women of mixed immigration status who don't fully come to the fore until ICE picks her up, a pivotal moment in the play.
"We can't tell them she's my mother, and they might let her go free. They might detain me too. And then what? I go back to Senegal? I haven't been there since I was four years old! I don't know anyone there. This is the only place I know," Marie, distraught, tells the women.
The play is resonant and timely in this era of Trump 2.0. While you'll find yourself belly-laughing throughout it, it also sends a gut-punching message about immigrants in this country.
In 2018, Trump made the now-infamous comment that he'd like fewer immigrants coming from what he depicted as "shithole countries," like Haiti, El Salvador and African countries.
However, to the contrary, African immigrants are the most educated demographic group coming to the United States from countries like Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia, and South Africa. They are better educated than American-born citizens. Those who come here for school or are born here excel academically.
On May 13, as part of an executive order, Trump granted refugee status to White South Africans, the Dutch-descended Afrikaners who instituted apartheid, for racial discrimination they claim they now face post- apartheid. This grant comes after Trump's January suspension of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, barring most refugees from entering the country and ignoring thousands of others who have been on a waitlist for years.
"This country is fine with TAKING. Dirty Africans! Get out of our country! Fine, I will go. But when do you want me to leave? Before or after I raise your children? Or clean your house? Or cook your food? Or braid your wear? Can you give me the Bo Derek hair, please?" Jaja says to the woman
While immigration is the big issue that gets exposed in the play, the century-long thorny issue of black hair, surprisingly, is normalized. At least in Jaja's shop, decades before Massachusetts passed the CROWN Act prohibiting discrimination based on Black hair texture and hairstyles in 2022.
The Cook twins inspired Massachusetts' CROWN Act. In 2017, Mystic Valley Regional Charter School in Malden banned twins Deanna and Mya Cook from playing after-school sports and attending their prom because they wore hair extensions to school, violating school policy. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey stepped in on the twins' behalf.
Black hairstyles are not criticized when they are appropriated by white culture. In 1979, actress Bo Derek donned cornrows in her breakthrough film 10. In 1980, People Magazine credited Derek with making the style a "cross-cultural craze." In 2018, when Kim Kardashian posted a video of herself flaunting braids to Snapchat, she credited them as wearing "Bo Derek braids."
The culture within Jaja's African Hair Braiding will resonate with many Black women. Jalynn Charity, a first-year student at Wellesley College, wears mini braids. "The play felt similar and comfortable because I've been in a place like that for long hours while getting my hair done. "
Like the customers in Jaja's salon, Jalynn shared that she sits in a chair, falls asleep, reads a book, and brings snacks, but never thinks about the hair branders' interior lives. Charity continued, "I have a transactional relationship with my hair braiders." I say, "How are you?" but I don't ask about their day. I don't know who their kids are because I don't think about their lives."
In one scene, we see how, after braiding hair for long hours on their feet, the women's legs are often swollen, and their hands blistered. "It makes me want to go to my salon the next time I get my hair braided, ask the braider how they are doing, and have a conversation. I never do that, and it's one of the insights I take away from the play," Charity stated.