Clap, clap, clap. [Twisted: The Tangled History of Black Hair Culture by Emma Dabiri]

From Guardian contributor and prominent BBC race correspondent Emma Dabiri comes a timely and resonant essay collection exploring the ways in which black hair has been appropriated and stigmatized throughout history, with ruminations on body politics, race, pop culture, and Dabiri’s own journey to loving her hair.

Emma Dabiri can tell you the first time she chemically straightened her hair. She can describe the smell, the atmosphere of the salon, and her mix of emotions when she saw her normally kinky tresses fall down her shoulders. For as long as Emma can remember, her hair has been a source of insecurity, shame, and—from strangers and family alike—discrimination. And she is not alone.

Despite increasingly liberal world views, black hair continues to be erased, appropriated, and stigmatized to the point of taboo. Through her personal and historical journey, Dabiri gleans insights into the way racism is coded in society’s perception of black hair—and how it is often used as an avenue for discrimination. Dabiri takes us from pre-colonial Africa, through the Harlem Renaissance, and into today's Natural Hair Movement, exploring everything from women's solidarity and friendship, to the criminalization of dreadlocks, to the dubious provenance of Kim Kardashian's braids.

Through the lens of hair texture, Dabiri leads us on a historical and cultural investigation of the global history of racism—and her own personal journey of self-love and finally, acceptance.

Deeply researched and powerfully resonant, Twisted proves that far from being only hair, black hairstyling culture can be understood as an allegory for black oppression and, ultimately, liberation

I am never not going to read about Black hair. Key moments of my life are similarly marked by changes of my hair. Though it does not define who I am my hair is a critical part of my identity. My hair, in all that it represents, in all that it can endure, undergoing all the changes it does, adapting how it will lets the world know my African ancestry. How I accept and understand my hair is how I accept and understand my history, myself.

Emma Dabiri's Twisted is an exploration of the author's own identity through hair, but more importantly it's a ode to the complexity and history of Blackness, of Africanness, and how it's persevered through capitalism and white supremacy. Dabiri, of mixed race, identifies and dismantles how structural racism and its institutions have limited the rights of those of African descent, identifying them through their hair, and how the persisting history of African hair styling has shaped post-colonial narratives and lives.

A story of struggle and pain, Dabiri's Twisted hit most heavily when recounting histories of African slave struggles and generations of internalized racism. Learning that the story being Beloved (I've seen the movie and have therefore never wanted to read the book lest the pain intensify) was so much worse was jarring, but oddly uplifting. Examining the flip side of Black economic success under the same institutions designed to oppress was a good exercise in critical thought. And this book is so much more radical than I would have imagine a book about Black hair history being, but I guess that par for the course.

The message of overthrowing goals of assimilation or of ascendancy to economic parity had me nodding my head in agreement, only adding credence to any points the author made. The whole last chapter - straight facts. Just, straight facts. I'd been exposed to some of these hair history narratives in the past decade or so, but more elaboration is always welcome. At the same time I was exposed to deeper narratives, narratives of personal excellence for excellence's sake in the face of the most dire straits.

I just felt really uplifted as I read the book. I was learning a lot, I was feeling encouraged. History is a hard bitch to reckon with, but reckon with her we must. But overall I was just happy as I read this book. Happy and hopeful. 5 stars from me.

Originally published in 2019 as Don't Touch My Hair, this edition of Twisted is set for publication May/June 2020.