Product Description

What could make a smart woman ignore doctor's orders?

What could get a hardworking employee fired from her job?

What could get a black woman in hot water with her white boyfriend?

In a word...

HAIR.

When does a few ounces feel like a few tons? When a doctor advises a black woman to start an exercise program and she wonders how she can do it without breaking a sweat. When an employer fires her for wearing a cultural hairstyle that's "unprofessional," and she has to go to court to plead for her job. When she's with her man, and the moment she's supposed to let loose, she stops to secure her head scarf so he doesn't disturb the 'do.

TENDERHEADED?

Yes, definitely. All black women are, in one way or another.

The issue is not only about looking good, but about feeling adequate in a society where the beauty standards are unobtainable for most women. Tenderheaded boldly throws open the closet where black women's skeletons have been threatening to burst down the door. In poems, essays, cartoons, photos, and excerpts from novels and plays, women and men speak to the meaning hair has for them, and for society. In an intimate letter, A'Leila Perry Bundles pays tribute to her great-grandmother, hair-care pioneer Madam C.J. Walker, who launched a generation of African-American businesswomen. Corporate consultant Cherilyn "Liv" Wright interviews men and women on the hilarious ways they handle "the hair issue" between the sheets. Art historian Henry John Drewal explores how hairstyles, in Yoruba culture, indicate spiritual destiny, and activist Angela Davis questions how her message of revolution got reduced to a hairstyle.

Tenderheaded is as rich and diverse as the children of the African diaspora. With works by Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, bell hooks, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and other writers of passion, persuasion, and humor -- this is sure to be one of the most talked-about books of the year.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #461833 in Books
• Published on: 2002-01-29
• Released on: 2002-01-29
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .85" h x 6.46" w x 9.22" l, 1.22 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Ranging from the shaving of newborns to the coiffing of the dead, from the anecdotal to the scholarly, and from antebellum America to contemporary Africa, this remarkable array of writings and images illuminates black women's hair and its cultural meaning. Embracing all types of hair whether it's relaxed, worn in an Afro, has extensions woven in, is twisted into dreads or shaven off altogether the authors urge readers to respond to their own particular hair without judgment and to view it as an essential part of their personal space. They urge readers to be "tenderheaded" and complain when their scalp hurts, instead of stoically acting like a "strongblackwoman." While entries from famous authors such as Henry Louis Gates Jr., Lucille Clifton and Toni Morrison are often excerpted from previously published works, they gain new dimensions in this context. Yet it's the less well-known contributors who steal the show. Halima Taha, now a Muslim who covers her head, recalls being shunned as a teenager when she got her first Afro. Annabelle Baker explains how her undergraduate career at Hampton College in the 1940s was cut short the day she decided not to process her hair anymore. Yvonne Durant glorifies her grey hair, noting that it seems to have "upped" her I.Q. considerably "at least that's how I'm treated." Beyond the variety of contributors and the provocative quotes and historical tidbits sprinkled between the entries, it's the wealth of feeling rooted in hair that makes this volume so compelling. With its (s)nappy jacket and generous helpings of art and photos, this mini-encyclopedia should attract an avid audience.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review
Essence Ought to be at the top of everyone's must-read list.

Boston Herald An outstanding volume!

The Washington Post Because of the variety of voices in Tenderheaded...the book has a feeling of breadth and nuance.

Heart and Soul A must-read that unravels our deep-rooted history and relationship with hair.

The Boston Herald Peter Harris' piece...is just one gem in this outstanding volume.

The Times-Picayune (New Orleans) Perfectly captures black people's progress (or lack of it) on the hair issue....Valuable and enlightening to anyone who is tenderheaded in one way or another.

Black Issues Book Review It's time to get down to the nappy truth about all the pros and cons of black hair. Harris and Johnson's 'comb-bending collection' is a tell-it-like-it-is compilation of essays that give insight into what we and others think about it, the history behind our hair, and how it affects our lives.

Publishers Weekly This remarkable array of writings and images illuminates black women's hair and its cultural meaning....Beyond the variety of contributors and the provocative quotes and historical tidbits sprinkled between the entries, it's the wealth of feeling rooted in hair that makes this volume so compelling. With its (s)nappy jacket and generous helpings of art and photos, this mini-encyclopedia should attract an avid audience.

About the Author
Juliette Harris (right) is the editor of International Review of African-American Art, published by Hampton University Museum in Virginia. She has also written award-winning television and film documentaries.

Ntozake Shange, poet, novelist, playwright, and performer, wrote the Broadway-produced and Obie Award-winning For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf. She has also written numerous works of fiction, including Sassafras, Cypress and Indigo, Betsy Brown, and Liliane.