Ayana D. Byrd and Lori L. Tharps, Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America

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21. Ayana D. Byrd and Lori L. Tharps, Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America

This is a non-fiction book detailing, in vaguely historical order, the styles, meanings, and business of black hair within the United States. It focuses very little on specific hairstyles, instead describing topics like what is "good" hair versus "bad" hair, and how the attributes that make hair "good" have changed over time; various processes and products that tried to make "bad" hair into "good", and who profited economically off of them; the role and symbolism of the Afro (and other hairstyles, but that one in particular) in the political movements of the 1960s and 70s, and others. There are tons of photographs and drawings throughout the book, which showed the changes in depictions of both black people and their hair over time. I also liked how this one, seemingly small, topic allowed for discussion about expressions of racism, support for black-owned businesses, intersections of gender and race, and black people as used in advertising.

I really liked this book. My one complaint is that I would have liked it to go into more detail about some of the topics it covered, but that's not much of a problem.