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A review by scarlettletters
Me, My Hair, and I: Twenty-Seven Women Untangle an Obsession by Elizabeth Benedict
3.0
I'm too lazy to go back and check, but I'm starting to wonder if I've ever given a collection more than three stars just because there is such a variety in there and the essays that I thought were great may not have hit home for some other people and vice versa. As a collection, it wasn't bad as there were a range of women represented, however it skewed pretty old. A large number of the essays seemed to involve reminiscing about the way their moms did their hair in the 1960s and while I'm definitely interested in vintage hairstyles, I think that a few more stories from younger women would have filled this out. There were a few POC essays but I think white women may have been over-represented as well.
The two stand-outs for me were the one about an orthodox Jewish woman who later escaped from her sect (and apparently wrote a book about it which I now want to read) and the one about a woman who was born in prison (and apparently wrote a book about it which I now want to read). The latter was less about hair than just maybe a personal essay inspired by hair, but that's really what a lot of these were--using hair as a jumping off point to talk about other issues.
The two stand-outs for me were the one about an orthodox Jewish woman who later escaped from her sect (and apparently wrote a book about it which I now want to read) and the one about a woman who was born in prison (and apparently wrote a book about it which I now want to read). The latter was less about hair than just maybe a personal essay inspired by hair, but that's really what a lot of these were--using hair as a jumping off point to talk about other issues.