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Hair Raising

Hair Raising

Beauty, Culture, and African American Women

by Noliwe M. Rooks

Published by: Rutgers University Press

Imprint: Rutgers University Press

176 Pages, 140.00 × 216.00 × 13.00 mm

Paperback
9780813523125
Published: July 1996

£29.99

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Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

Nappi by nature: afros, hot combs, and black pride
Beauty, race, and black pride
Advertising contradictions
Broadening representational boundaries
Gender, hair, and African American women's magazines
In search of connections

Noliwe M. Rooks is an assistant professor of English and the coordinator of African American Studies at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. She was the associate editor of Paris Connections: African American Artists in Paris, winner of a 1993 American Book Award.

Rooks's excellent book is a welcome entry in the feminist debates about American 'beauty culture'... Readable, accessible, and helpfully illustrated. (Choice) Rooks dig deep to describe how beauty and culture have politicized African American women and demonstrates that Western definitions of beauty are often not endorsed by African American women. Compelling. (Booklist) Hair Rising is insightful, engaging, imaginative, and even musical. Rooks harmonizes her voice as a scholar analyzing hair with her voice as a black woman talking politics with other black women, in salons and parlors, to the rhythms of combing, brushing, braiding, and straightening... This a must-read! - Gloria Wade-Gayles (Professor of English and Women's Studies, Spelman College, and author of Pushed Back to Strength: A) Rooks deconstructs dominant cultural notions of femininity and/or beauty with humor, dignity, and a defiant sassiness. Read this book! - Joanne M. Braxton (Frances and Edwin L. Cummings Professor of America Studies and English, The College of William and M)