In 1989, my Senegalese mother and father worked together to purchase a hair salon on 125th Street in the heart of Harlem. At one of the first African braiding salons in the country, my mother, Aminata “Ami” Colé, wrapped my baby self tight on her back as she stood eight to 12 hours a day, making her clients feel beautiful. As I learned to talk — both in my native tongue, Wolof, from my “fake aunties,” and in English, from my mother’s loyal customers — the underlying lessons I heard and internalized were about community, womanhood, and beauty. As she finished up with a customer, my mother would ask, “Do you like?” She wasn’t satisfied until she could tell the answer from a person’s smile.
