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nicola_in_yeg780's review against another edition
5.0
Not only entertaining, but rich in knowledge, little known history, and cultural theory. So illuminating and it changed my thinking on so many things.
eily_may's review against another edition
4.0
Really enjoyed this book. It's content is challenging, interesting and necessary. Loses a star just because I found parts of it slightly repetitive and the structure a little bit haphazard.
brooklynncollier's review
4.0
So good to read feelings I hadn’t necessarily verbalized myself while also learning so much at the same time. It took me a little longer to get through it than I wanted because some parts are quite dense and I found myself only able to read about 20 pages at a time but still so good. Definitely knowledge I will carry with me.
katie_is_dreaming's review against another edition
Emma Dabiri’s first book is impressive in scope and style. She talks about the history and cultural meaning of black hair, and uses this as a focus through which to explore racism, community, concepts of time, technology, and all sorts of other ideas. It’s also very nicely written.
Dabiri is Irish Nigerian, and now lives in the UK, and it’s interesting reading about her experience of racism growing up in an Ireland that was not multi-cultural. There’s still not as much written about racism in Ireland as there is in the UK and the US, but Dabiri’s experiences highlight the casual racism that she faced, and what’s most surprising and interesting about her experience, is that, often, it was not her skin that people drew attention to or singled her out for, but her hair. She discusses how, in her teens, her skin was envied by her friends who wanted to be tanned, and remembers other instances where people saw her as beautiful, but, on seeing her hair, they would be disappointed.
It was so interesting to me that her blackness, or her racial ‘otherness’ was bound up in her hair having the tight curl that is shared by many of African descent.While her brown skin was a marker too, her hair was what most stood out, what was most problematic for others. She writes about all the ways she used to style her hair so that she could better fit in with her white peers. It’s this personal history that leads her to explore the history and cultural significance of black hair in her work and in this book.
She explores how black women and men have sought to straighten or treat their hair in order to fit in with Western ideals. She explores the history of black hairdressing in Britain and the US, including biographical details about black businesswomen who made fortunes from selling patented products for straightening and styling black hair. She also explores how black performers who adopted European styles of hair succeeded in their careers where other black artists didn’t. And she explores issues around cultural appropriation, where ‘blackness’ is othered and vilified when it’s black people celebrating their own cultures or simply being themselves, but it becomes fashionable when white people claim it as ‘inclusive’ or a ‘new’ style. It’s incredibly offensive how white people seek to appropriate other cultures without acknowledging or celebrating the specialness of these cultures themselves. We never acknowledge the origins of many of the things that we have appropriated from other cultures, and we have appropriated so much from black cultures.
Dabiri seeks to address some of that cultural appropriation, as well as the negative stereotyping of African hair. The history of black hairstyling was not something I knew a lot about, and Dabiri goes into the fact that hairstyling in black cultures can have spiritual or religious meanings, and that certain types of styles have historic significance. She talks a lot about Yoruba practices around hairstyling. It has extremely potent spiritual links, even to the point of the hairstylist having links to specific gods, which is something that is unfamiliar to us in the Western world. Dabiri seeks to elevate black hairstyling beyond the stereotypes associated with black hair, and her arguments are very successful.
She also writes about how European concepts of time don’t include, or don’t see as profitable, the time needed for communal hairstyling that is crucial to African communities. She writes about the communities of black women, the mamas, grandmas, and best girlfriends, she needed growing up, and has since found in her life in the UK. She writes about hairstyling for black women as intimacy between women, a sign of sisterhood and close friendship.
I really enjoyed this book. One of the things that struck me about Dabiri’s writing is how she can meld academic writing with a more conversational style. It makes the book so warm and easily readable, as you feel like Dabiri is just having a chat with her readers.
There’s so much here to unpack and talk about, and I think I really would get more from it on a second read. Rating: 9/10 - it’s just an incredibly impressive piece of scholarship that’s also very relatable.
Blog: awonderfulbook.com | Instagram: katiemotenbooks | Twitter: katiemotenbooks
Dabiri is Irish Nigerian, and now lives in the UK, and it’s interesting reading about her experience of racism growing up in an Ireland that was not multi-cultural. There’s still not as much written about racism in Ireland as there is in the UK and the US, but Dabiri’s experiences highlight the casual racism that she faced, and what’s most surprising and interesting about her experience, is that, often, it was not her skin that people drew attention to or singled her out for, but her hair. She discusses how, in her teens, her skin was envied by her friends who wanted to be tanned, and remembers other instances where people saw her as beautiful, but, on seeing her hair, they would be disappointed.
It was so interesting to me that her blackness, or her racial ‘otherness’ was bound up in her hair having the tight curl that is shared by many of African descent.While her brown skin was a marker too, her hair was what most stood out, what was most problematic for others. She writes about all the ways she used to style her hair so that she could better fit in with her white peers. It’s this personal history that leads her to explore the history and cultural significance of black hair in her work and in this book.
She explores how black women and men have sought to straighten or treat their hair in order to fit in with Western ideals. She explores the history of black hairdressing in Britain and the US, including biographical details about black businesswomen who made fortunes from selling patented products for straightening and styling black hair. She also explores how black performers who adopted European styles of hair succeeded in their careers where other black artists didn’t. And she explores issues around cultural appropriation, where ‘blackness’ is othered and vilified when it’s black people celebrating their own cultures or simply being themselves, but it becomes fashionable when white people claim it as ‘inclusive’ or a ‘new’ style. It’s incredibly offensive how white people seek to appropriate other cultures without acknowledging or celebrating the specialness of these cultures themselves. We never acknowledge the origins of many of the things that we have appropriated from other cultures, and we have appropriated so much from black cultures.
Dabiri seeks to address some of that cultural appropriation, as well as the negative stereotyping of African hair. The history of black hairstyling was not something I knew a lot about, and Dabiri goes into the fact that hairstyling in black cultures can have spiritual or religious meanings, and that certain types of styles have historic significance. She talks a lot about Yoruba practices around hairstyling. It has extremely potent spiritual links, even to the point of the hairstylist having links to specific gods, which is something that is unfamiliar to us in the Western world. Dabiri seeks to elevate black hairstyling beyond the stereotypes associated with black hair, and her arguments are very successful.
She also writes about how European concepts of time don’t include, or don’t see as profitable, the time needed for communal hairstyling that is crucial to African communities. She writes about the communities of black women, the mamas, grandmas, and best girlfriends, she needed growing up, and has since found in her life in the UK. She writes about hairstyling for black women as intimacy between women, a sign of sisterhood and close friendship.
I really enjoyed this book. One of the things that struck me about Dabiri’s writing is how she can meld academic writing with a more conversational style. It makes the book so warm and easily readable, as you feel like Dabiri is just having a chat with her readers.
There’s so much here to unpack and talk about, and I think I really would get more from it on a second read. Rating: 9/10 - it’s just an incredibly impressive piece of scholarship that’s also very relatable.
Blog: awonderfulbook.com | Instagram: katiemotenbooks | Twitter: katiemotenbooks
akovach's review
4.0
This was SUCH an interesting read. I knew just a little bit about Black hair history but not to this extent. I am amazed how nuanced it is across cultures. I am saddened and in awe of the load Black woman (and men) carry in presenting themselves in a way that is "acceptable" by white-centric cultures. It really pales in comparison to the white beauty standards white woman complain about. This was an incredible and seemingly complete history that helps explain the beauty and significance of Black hair all over the world. Highly recommend.
"Afro hair has different requirements; where straight hair is prone to greasiness, mine is prone to dryness, and washing it daily would further strip it of its essential oils and dry it out further. Afro hair needs products that would make white people’s hair greasy and oily but keeps ours moisturized.
African aesthetics have their own norms, which do not always correspond to European ones. The Afro is read as traditionally “african,” despite the fact that in West African contexts hair is rarely left unmolded or unbraided. The Afro is a symbol of diasporic resistance, a rejection of an imposed value system that denigrates us. Sporting an Afro is a defiant up-yours to such a system, but that fact alone does not make it inherently “African.”
Because hair is associated with spiritual well-being, no price is too high to pay for your hair. This was a savvy ruse created by hairstylists to avoid having to argue with clients and, ultimately, to make more cash.
The discrepancy between the generic term “cornrowing” in the US and “canerowing” in the Caribbean and the US betrays the sad history of slavery. The varying regional names reflect different crops, for instance the sugarcane that was cultivated by the enslaved in the Caribbean.
Depending on the style and the size of the braids, an entire head of hair can take a long time - hours, even days - to complete. … I’m keep to disrupt our deeply ingrained (yet recent and culturally specific) myth of time as a commodity. It makes a lot more sense to imagine braiding as a sociable time during which the business of living is conducted.
Thinkers from James Baldwin to W.E.B. Du Bois to Frantz Fanon and Ngugi wa Thiong’o remind us that the most destructive consequence of colonialism was not the control of the land but the control of the minds of the people.
If I could be reborn at any point in modern history, it would be in the Harlem Renaissance, a period when an explosion of black literary and cultural talent was ushered into being[...] a group of educated black professionals known as the Talented Tenth. [They] believed that if the world could bear witness to their refinement, the result would be universal social acceptance for all black people. It worked. From this environment there emerged an outpouring of stellar black creative energy.
The jealousy and fear that white women felt [of black women tempting their men by their hair], was deemed serious enough to have a direct impact on legislation. The Tignon Laws, which were signed into being in 1786 by Esteban Rodriguez Miro, the governor of the then Spanish colony of Louisiana, are an explicit demonstration of this. The fabulous, ornate hairstyling of black women was causing much consternation for white women, who felt it bestowed unfair advantages in vying for the attention of white men.
For mixed-race slaves, like Margaret Garner, proximity to whiteness, without the protection that whiteness brought, could be nothing less than deadly."
"Afro hair has different requirements; where straight hair is prone to greasiness, mine is prone to dryness, and washing it daily would further strip it of its essential oils and dry it out further. Afro hair needs products that would make white people’s hair greasy and oily but keeps ours moisturized.
African aesthetics have their own norms, which do not always correspond to European ones. The Afro is read as traditionally “african,” despite the fact that in West African contexts hair is rarely left unmolded or unbraided. The Afro is a symbol of diasporic resistance, a rejection of an imposed value system that denigrates us. Sporting an Afro is a defiant up-yours to such a system, but that fact alone does not make it inherently “African.”
Because hair is associated with spiritual well-being, no price is too high to pay for your hair. This was a savvy ruse created by hairstylists to avoid having to argue with clients and, ultimately, to make more cash.
The discrepancy between the generic term “cornrowing” in the US and “canerowing” in the Caribbean and the US betrays the sad history of slavery. The varying regional names reflect different crops, for instance the sugarcane that was cultivated by the enslaved in the Caribbean.
Depending on the style and the size of the braids, an entire head of hair can take a long time - hours, even days - to complete. … I’m keep to disrupt our deeply ingrained (yet recent and culturally specific) myth of time as a commodity. It makes a lot more sense to imagine braiding as a sociable time during which the business of living is conducted.
Thinkers from James Baldwin to W.E.B. Du Bois to Frantz Fanon and Ngugi wa Thiong’o remind us that the most destructive consequence of colonialism was not the control of the land but the control of the minds of the people.
If I could be reborn at any point in modern history, it would be in the Harlem Renaissance, a period when an explosion of black literary and cultural talent was ushered into being[...] a group of educated black professionals known as the Talented Tenth. [They] believed that if the world could bear witness to their refinement, the result would be universal social acceptance for all black people. It worked. From this environment there emerged an outpouring of stellar black creative energy.
The jealousy and fear that white women felt [of black women tempting their men by their hair], was deemed serious enough to have a direct impact on legislation. The Tignon Laws, which were signed into being in 1786 by Esteban Rodriguez Miro, the governor of the then Spanish colony of Louisiana, are an explicit demonstration of this. The fabulous, ornate hairstyling of black women was causing much consternation for white women, who felt it bestowed unfair advantages in vying for the attention of white men.
For mixed-race slaves, like Margaret Garner, proximity to whiteness, without the protection that whiteness brought, could be nothing less than deadly."
isering's review against another edition
4.0
A collection of deeply researched essays on black hair.
prairiephlox's review
5.0
It is impossible to state how much I learned and how much I loved learning from this book.
sundaysunshine's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.75