Gabriela Meléndez Rivera, GPJ Puerto Rico Flor-Angel Guilbe Stevens looks at a photo on her cellphone while styling the hair of Perla del Mar, her 8-year-old daughter, at their home in Juana Díaz, Puerto Rico. Guilbe has embraced the natural hair movement in her country, celebrating her and her daughter’s blackness. JUANA DÍAZ, PUERTO RICO — The scene is the same every Sunday.
“Lower your head, precious,” Flor-Angel Guilbe Stevens says, hands full of moisturizing cream. One by one, she twists dreadlocks, tangling together and growing naturally without the use of brushes or scissors. This is the hair of Perla del Mar, her 8-year-old daughter.
Soon, an aroma announces that Perla’s grandmother has finished filtering coffee and it is time to take a break. Guilbe has been laboring over her daughter’s locks for more than an hour. It is almost the same ritual she experienced during her childhood in the 1990s, except that relaxers were applied to her hair, and it was styled with a blow-dryer or set in curlers, all to keep it under control.
When she entered university, she questioned the imposition of straight hair with which Afro-descendant women were growing up and decided to keep her hair natural. Guilbe, a 36-year-old preschool teacher living in Juana Díaz, is one of the many voices in Puerto Rico who, through reconciling with their hair and consequently their racial identity, are practicing a type of motherhood that celebrates blackness starting in childhood. .
