Jaja’s African Hair Braiding examines immigrant life in a Harlem salon

It is an uncomfortably hot morning in Harlem as two women open the shutters of a braiding salon and a band of hairdressers begin turning customers’ intricate visions into reality. Jocelyn Bioh’s Tony-winning 2023 play Jaja’s African Hair Braiding traces 12 hours at the eponymous shop, whose staff are predominantly from west Africa and now navigate a country where immigration is often misunderstood and politically weaponised.

“We end in a very different place than where we started,” Bioh says. This month the play opens at Lyric Hammersmith in London, directed by Monique Touko. Where Bioh’s School Girls explored colourism and beauty politics through the lens of teenagers in a Ghanaian boarding school, Jaja’s looks at an older generation in 2019 who have emigrated from the same region.

Both plays probe Black female identity within a single setting, but this one confines its action to a single working day. “I knew the play was going to start at 9am and end at 9pm – a really life-changing 12 hours,” Bioh says.

United States, Harlem

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