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Introduction
Contributors in this collection are African American and Afro Latina authors relating their often shocking real-life encounters--vis-a-vis their natural hair--through personal essays. Project page: https://shuffle.do/projects/trauma-tresses-truth-untangling-our-hair-through-personal-narrative
Education
August 2005 - January 2008
Publications
Publications (53)
A Library Journal Best Social Science title of 2022
Black women continue to have a complex and convoluted relationship with their hair.
From grammar and high schools to corporate boardrooms and military squadrons, Black and Afro Latina natural hair continues to confound, transfix, and enrage members of White American society. Why, in 2023, is th...
TRAUMA, TRESSES, & TRUTH is a three-day virtual conference examining the politics, policing, and perception of African American and Afro Latina women’s natural hair in American society. You may see the program from the inaugural 2021 conference at https://trauma-tresses-truth-untangling-our-hair-thro.heysummit.com. The 2023 conference will occur Au...
In this essay, I interlace personal vignettes with examinations of the manners in which natural-hair discrimination disproportionately affects, targets, and seeks to corral Black women in nearly every environment imaginable, including the armed forces.
In this chapter, I explore the reasons why hair discrimination affects Black and Brown women in such incommensurate ways—and exacts such a searing toll for us—relative to men.
This book, TRAUMA, TRESSES, & TRUTH: UNTANGLING OUR HAIR THROUGH PERSONAL NARRATIVE, grows out of one of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs’ (colloquially known as AWP) renowned conferences; in this particular instance, the 2020 conference that convened in San Antonio, TX. I had proposed a panel on this topic and was delighted when it re...
It was just my third day on the job. A coworker who'd been on PTO my first two days-a rotund gentleman with an infectious smile-appeared in my office, introducing himself via nutcracking handshake. He made small talk, then business-speak, back to small talk. Only so much to be said about the weather, the traffic, and the mayor. A column of silence...
Account about being racially profiled in a popular grocery food chain.
Appears in NATURAL BRIDGE
Proposal Overview
Project website: https://shuffle.do/projects/trauma-tresses-truth-untangling-our-hair-through-personal-narrative
Maryland Literary Review
Literary Paritantra: International Journal on Literature and Theory (India, Winter 2010)
Network
Projects
Project (1)
From grammar and high schools to corporate boardrooms and military squadrons, Black and Afro-Latina natural hair confounds, transfixes, and enrages members of White American society. Why, in 2021, is this still the case? And why are women so disproportionately affected?
Audre Lorde penned an essay in which she asked “Is Your Hair Still Political?” Natural hair, whether in the form of braids, afros, dreadlocks, or other natural styles, has always been political, and today, our hair remains political and persecuted. This anthology, for which I serve as both editor and contributor, will examine the disquieting, mystifying, and appalling experiences of Black and Black Latina women. This project illuminates two conundrums: first, the absurdity of trying to enforce white haircare grooming standards on African American women; and second, the muted but invasive means by which society, its institutions, and its inherent structures shame our hair from infancy through adulthood.
