In addition, the stages of her life are seen through her relationship to hair: her mother having beautiful hair when Ifemelu was a child and then cutting it off in her years of religious extremism, Aunty Uju and her having to relax their hair to be taken seriously in America, the embarrassment of her tiny Afro after a certain relaxer starts to make her hair fall out, and her final love and acceptance of her natural hair gained by cultivating relationships with other natural-haired black women online. The first half of the story is framed by Ifemelu visiting a hair salon in Trenton, New Jersey to get braids in preparation for returning to Nigeria. Hair is incredibly important to Ifemelu's experience of Nigeria and America as, especially in America, it can represent one's cultural and individual identity or be wielded as a means of racism and oppression.
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