How I learned to tell my own story as a South Asian woman

As a child, I wanted to belong, but didn’t see brown girls like me in culture. I’d like space for our stories to be told, too

Every Sunday, Jaspreet Kaur’s mother would rub oil into her daughter’s scalp and comb it through her hair while sharing stories of their family’s history. “The oiling of the hair was a precious time when women caught up and connected to their roots in the stories we were told, the songs we’d sing,” Kaur says. The award-winning spoken-word artist, writer and teacher explains that the Sanskrit word sneha not only means “to oil” but also “to love”.

When Kaur started secondary school, at the age of 11, the oil in her hair along with the fragrant scent of tarka (spice-infused oil) on her blazer that no amount of Impulse body spray could mask attracted negative attention from other girls who ridiculed her and made comments such as “stinks of curry” and “greasy hair”. From that day, she made the decision to no longer have her hair oiled.

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