Hair Raising - Noliwe M. Rooks

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.