Women's hair is big business and big fashion. There are not enough pages in the world to deconstruct the relationship between our dead scalp strands and ourselves. These two books are part of what happens when women take each other seriously and start to look at how hair molds and defines us and our journeys in the world.
Me, My Hair, and I is an anthology of 27 essays by women from a variety of backgrounds. The essays range from personal to political, and from dye jobs to pubic hair. Hair Story is a more historical work that chronicles Black Hair in America from the time of slavery to the present. The 2nd edition was published in 2014.
Both books are thought-provoking, intimate and engaging.
I grabbed Me, My Hair, and I off of the galley shelves in a flurry of passion. I love to listen to women talking seriously about hair, and how wonderful to find a book whose cover promised an incredible range of voices and experiences.
And a white lady with dredlocs. You know.
At first, I had decided not to read that essay. And then, after being blown away by the politics and culture exposed and discussed so eloquently in some of the other essays, two things happened. I read a review of the book that pointed out the abundance of women of color on the cover as opposed to their words in the book. And then I heard Dr. Adrienne Keene's interview on Another Round, in which she talks about her hair for a moment.
Suddenly, clarity.
There are no veiled women in this book. Or Native women, or women discussing the struggles of Asian hair, and the Black women write about the politics and pain of hair only. And that one about the dredlocs? Listen. I read it and almost threw the book across the room.
I ordered Hair Story the next day. I found it because in my quest to find Black Women Travel Writers I found Lori Tharps (and Lauret Savoy.)(and that is all)(which is a conversation I will have later) who co-authored the book. The bibliography is like a candy store of information.
It is important that the things women do to ourselves to exist in the world are acknowledged as having meaning. The business of hair is huge, it has far-ranging cultural weight, it has environmental weight, and it isn't going away.
Benedict's book shares important stories, and you do have to deal with the blanket of white privilege to get at them. It's sticky and gets everywhere. Looking beyond privilege and discomfort with it is work. Seeking out stories in different voices means understanding the range of difference in voices. It means listening without response. It means being uncomfortable with ourselves. It means that we look harder when hair is used as a tool of abuse. It means we stop apologizing for the women who appropriate.
White women are not taught that we are complicit in the culture of oppression. So we have to learn to identify it. Naming for each other the places where we must do better is part of that learning.
Meanwhile, have this from the Guardian. It is glorious.
#40days40books list
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