Don't Touch My Hair
Format
Paperback $5.49List price: $13.71 List Price This is the manufacturer's recommended retail price. Please note older versions of books may not reflect the most current list price due to price adjustments made on newer printings. We strive to keep the website's list price updated to match the current MSRP, based on information from publishers.
About
This book is about why black hair matters and how it can be viewed as a blueprint for decolonisation. Emma Dabiri takes us from pre-colonial Africa, through the Harlem Renaissance, Black Power and on to today's Natural Hair Movement, the cultural appropriation wars and beyond. We look at everything from hair capitalists, like Madam C.J. Walker in the early 1900s, to the rise of Shea Moisture today, from women's solidarity and friendship to 'black people time', forgotten African scholars and the dubious provenance of Kim Kardashian's braids.
The scope of black hairstyling ranges from pop culture to cosmology, from prehistoric times to the (afro)futuristic. Uncovering sophisticated indigenous mathematical systems in black hairstyles, alongside styles that served as secret intelligence networks leading enslaved Africans to freedom, Don't Touch My Hair proves that far from being only hair, black hairstyling culture can be understood as an allegory for black oppression and, ultimately, liberation.
- ISBN:
- 9780141986289
- Publication Date:
- 2020-01-01
- Publisher:
- Penguin Books
- Language:
- English
- Page Count:
- 244
- Size:
- 8.0" l x 5.0" w x 1.0" h
- Social Science