As I’ve gotten more comfortable in my homestay, all of our conversations lead to deeper topics.  The biggest task I’ve faced during this time is managing expectations with reality.  Recently my hair has been a big topic amongst my family because they feel it is ever changing. When I entered their home I had braid extensions. Part way through my stay I removed my extensions and revealed my dreads. The conversation about my hair led us to a conversation about political revolutions. I contributed to the conversation my knowledge about the ways black hair is often used as a form of resistance. Then my host mom began to talk about the different revolutions in Mexico and what people have been fighting for. Since my host mom likes documentaries and history as much as I do, we now have ‘documentary nights’.

The first documentary we watched was What Happened, Miss Simone? The film provided some context to Black resistances in the States. My host grandmother made the connection between how I identify and what I attribute to my blackness with the similar ways Miss Simone defines her identity, in the film. A conversation that started with my hair quickly turned into a discussion about how I identify. The main point of our conversation was me explaining that I don’t perceive my identity as a Black person to be negative. From my family’s perspective Black isn’t an identity, and people should be more than a color. However, for myself, I am just Black and everything negative and positive that it means. After we saw our movie and had our conversation, my family stopped correcting or trying to project their own perspective of identity onto me. We’ve created an understanding of how I identify, all with the help of movie night.