Epilogue: Women Like Us Summary

The narrator recalls that, in the act of braiding her hair, she remembers looking like her mother, and in turn her mother recalled looking like her own mother, and so on.

The narrator's mother's generation had two rules: "always use your ten fingers," meaning one should become skilled at cooking and other duties in preparation of becoming a housewife, and two, that one should never have sex before marriage, and even after marriage a woman should not enjoy sex, lest her husband lose respect for her.

In this world, a woman making a living as a writer is unthinkable. Writing is an act of disrespect, of rebellion, a waste of time for a woman who should be learning cooking. The narrator compares writing to hair braiding: taking coarse, loose strands (of thought) and bringing them together in...