Review by Booklist Review
ldquo;It's only hair," is the response many Black women contend with when voicing their frustration at society's judgement of their tresses. In this debut, BBC presenter and Guardian contributor Dabiri, explores the strands of racism which are tangled up in considerations of Black hair. Like many Black women, Dabiri can vividly remember the first time she chemically straightened her hair. She can recall the smell, the burning sensation on her scalp, and the mixed range of emotions she experienced watching her thick, tightly coiled hair transformed into lank, straight locks. As a mixed-race child growing up in Ireland in the 1980s, she hated her hair and explored ways to make it better comply with European standards of beauty. There have been many discussions about Black hair culture and cultural appropriation that, while important, fail to reach the heart of the matter. Dabiri situates her own story within the wider history of how African hair has been perceived from before the European invasion of Africa until now. Written in a style that will both challenge readers and create the sense of joining in a confiding conversation with a friend, Twisted provides a new perspective on a complexly resonant topic.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
BBC correspondent Dabiri debuts with a lively and wide-ranging essay collection combining history, memoir, political jeremiad, cultural criticism, and social science. Growing up in Ireland with an Irish mother and a Nigerian father, Dabiri was "made to feel like an abomination," whose "tightly coiled hair" presented "a problem that needed to be managed." She describes early efforts to disguise her real hair ("from weaves, to extensions, to Jheri curls, curly perms, straight perms, and straighteners") as "bid for assimilation," and explores the history of black hair from traditional African braided hairstyles to the use of painful "cotton cards" to comb the hair of enslaved children in antebellum America and the rise of chemical hair straightening and skin lightening products during the early 1900s. Dabiri also examines black masculinity through the lens of a "high-profile rap beef" between Drake and Pusha T, documents cultural appropriation by white artists including Fred Astaire and Madonna, and revisits a 2017 advertising campaign that employed "the language of struggle and the overcoming of adversity" to market natural hair products to white women. Dabiri explores both her personal story and the larger history with a fierce sense of purpose and an appealing eclecticism, though her prose rarely sings. Readers will be fascinated by how deeply the story of the African diaspora is intertwined in changing attitudes toward black hair. (May)
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Review by Library Journal Review
In this engaging and enlightening work, journalist and academic researcher Dabiri introduces readers to the rich, complex cultures and politics of black hair in locations around the world. Nigerian-Irish Dabiri grew up at a time when black people in Ireland were few and far between, and both Dabiri and her hair attracted a lot of attention. Dabiri, a contributor and commentator for the Guardian and the BBC, draws on personal experience and her research background to explain hair as an expression of culture and spirituality in many African and African-diasporic cultures. She interrogates Western notions of history and respectability while delving into African ways of engaging with the past, present, and future through oral and visual storytelling, including the embodied language of hairstyles. Dabiri discusses the history of black women chemically straightening their hair, the popularity of the natural hair movement, social and political stereotypes of black hairstyles, hairstyling as social time, and gendered expectations for black women's hair. Notably, she also discusses the commercialism, consumerism, representation, colonialism, and liberation of black hair, all while incorporating reflections on her own experiences. VERDICT Highly recommended for all readers, especially given recent headlines about discrimination against black hairstyles and movements to decriminalize black hair.--Monica Howell, Northwestern Health Sciences Univ. Lib., Bloomington, MN
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A historical and personal exploration of why black hair isn't "just hair." From white plantation mistresses shaving enslaved women's heads as punishment to present-day federal court rulings declaring it legal to fire black employees for wearing natural hairstyles, black hair is political. In her study of black hair cultures, BBC race correspondent Dabiri observes how, across continents and centuries, people of African descent have been subjected to "scrutiny, fetishization, or censure, and sometimes all three, because of our hair." Black hair, writes the author, has been deemed inferior and "difficult to control" and used as a justification for discrimination. Dabiri blends thorough research with incisive commentary and artful memoir. "My own hair has been disappointing people since my birth," she writes. Growing up Irish Nigerian in Ireland in the 1980s and '90s, her hair was a constant source of shame and trauma. Today, in Ireland and elsewhere, black hair is still, in many cases, considered taboo. Meanwhile, the Kardashian-Jenners make millions appropriating black hair and aesthetics. Though peppered throughout with engaging pop-culture references, the book is also a deft geopolitical and economic meditation. What might Africa and her descendants have become if not for the horrors of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and colonialism? Given the abiding influence of racism and colonialism, how do we liberate and decolonize black hair? Dabiri explores the current natural hair movement and looks back at the complex successes and legacies of the first black female millionaires: early black hair care entrepreneurs Madam C.J. Walker and Annie Turnbo Malone. Compelling and engrossing, this book will satisfy readers familiar with the sizzle of the straightening comb as well as those who aren't. Part memoir, part social history, and sure to become the definitive book on the politics, culture, and economics of black hair. (b/w illustrations) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
