Hair Raising: Beauty, Culture, and African American Women
by Noliwe Rooks
Publication Date: Jul 01, 1996
List Price: $42.99
Format: Paperback, 176 pages
Classification: Nonfiction
ISBN13: 9780813523125
Imprint: Rutgers University Press
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Parent Company: Rutgers University
We all know there is a politics of skin color, but is there a politics of hair? In this book, Noliwe Rooks explores the history and politics of hair and beauty culture in African American communities from the nineteenth century to the 1990s. She discusses the ways in which African American women have located themselves in their own families, communities, and national culture through beauty advertisements, treatments, and styles. Bringing the story into today’s beauty shop, listening to other women talk about braids, Afros, straighteners, and what they mean today to grandmothers, mothers, sisters, friends, and boyfriends, she also talks about her own family and has fun along the way. Hair Raising is that rare sort of book that manages both to entertain and to illuminate its subject.