[.ca] Tenderheaded: A Comb-Bending Collection of Hair Stories (ISBN 0671047566)

worth reading:
very good,worth reading,written by various people..... enjoyable,gets you thinking,nice photographs too. As you may or may not know African coyly hair is quite unique in vision, texture, behaviour and probably in chemical make up too. Coily haired women around the world, go to the most extremes in terms of spending. (Spending time, spending pain and the spending price to have African coily hair styled) A hairstyle that we believe looks good or will help us to become socially and economically advanced. Or maybe for our own self-esteem and maybe to attract the charms of a love interest. Either way your hair is a reflection of the state of your consciousness, your internal beliefs and your relationship with the world. This book is like having group therapy or interviewing other women,but it is not all black women's views.I am reviewng it because I think it is worth a read. As you may or may not know African coily hair is quite unique in vision, texture, behaviour and probably in chemical make up too. Coily haired women around the world, go to the most extremes in terms of spending. (Spending time, spending pain and the spending price to have African coily hair styled) A hairstyle that we believe looks good or will help us to become socially and economically advanced. Or maybe for our own self-esteem and maybe to attract the charms of a love interest. Either way, psychologically and philosophically I believe that your hair is a reflection of the state of your consciousness, your internal beliefs and your relationship with the world. What about exploring physics through african hair? For example how much pressure, gravity and tension and tearing do we put our hair through by combing it? let alone excessive harsh combing. Mathematically speaking how many of you readers can tell me how many curls/coils per inch your hair has, and does it vary in coil and moisture? Next question:When does the nature of the hair change and why? (i know it does!) It seems to me all these books on afro hair are good and I welcome it, but we still need to be more informed and they all seem to need better editing, just like Black American beauty magazines.I must campaign for better grammar and less air brushed photos!!! It is as if we like to see ourselves falsely rather than the reality of what we are... Black women need to demand more scientific reasoning from our books and be less competitive over black men which only fuels their egos and as a result probably creates more baby-mothers!!! Sorry but I had to vent out my opinions. I give this book four stars for the effort and time invested as a writer I know it takes time... I maintain that it is still worth reading,more than any carcinogenic chemical so called hair treatment that you pay for. Anyway what do I know I am a black african british woman!!!! Most of you Americans think we in Britain have no trains or any kind of progressive development!!! Anyway if I wrote my book answering my questions that I put to you how many of you would buy it?

Tender View of All Aspects of Black Hair:
From the symbolism of braiding and hairstyles in Africa to the customs and traditions of African American women and their hair there is so much history which connects all of us to our ancestors. Tenderheaded takes perspective from a diverse audience of authors- writers, anthropologists, beauticians, hiphop historians, poets, doctors, mothers and fathers share their stories and just how entangled hair is into every single facet of black life. Definitions and explanations with detailed pictures and inspiring quotes are featured throughout Tenderheaded providing a vast array of entertaining and educational lessons. This book will evoke feelings varying from childhood nostalgia, passion for rights, romantic interludes, and a cultural solidarity. From natural hair to relaxed from wigs to weaves from afros to bald fades and every hair style in between no aspect of black hair is left untouched. Excellent read and thorough resource for every possessor, scholar, and admirer of all types of black hair.

All That You Want To Know:
This is a very unique book. I have to say I LOVED IT! My being a young black woman, all the stories hit close to home. This book gave a non-bias look at black women's hair, and black culture all around the world including here in America. It gave many view points, from men women, blacks and even whites. I recommed this book to anyone who is confused about their hair and themselves. Nappy is defiantly Happy!!!! Peace.

A TASTY GUMBO OF STORIES, ESSAYS & FACTS ABOUT OUR HAIR.....:
....Tenderheaded, while long-winded and self-indulgent at times, is a great testament to our history and our hair. Not only does it traces our ever-changing styles, images and hair idols, but it's a wonderful timeline for our progress. If you or someone you know has hair issues, or you want to head off the tide of BS before it takes root in a new generation, this book is a must!!

"Tressed Out":
.... Black women and their hair -- it's a loaded feminine topic, say Juliette Harris and Pamela Johnson (respectively editor of International Review of African-American Art and a columnist at Essence Magazine), in Tenderheaded, a wise, joyous anthology. All their sisters are "tenderheaded," or sensitive about their hair one way or another. Some could never stand the heat of a curling iron, while others feel their scalps sting at the mere sight of a fine-toothed comb. Others, reading W. E. B. Du Bois' comment that a woman "black or brown and crowned in curled mists" is "the most beautiful thing on earth," pat their own misty crowns and mutter, "mailman's hair: every knot's got its own route." Reading this anthology feels a little like talking with your girlfriends, grown daughters, or favorite aunts on a lazy afternoon. Now and then a simpatico male drops by--maybe Peter Harris, gloating at finally having learned how to box-braid his six-year-old daughter's curls, or maybe Henry Louis Gates musing on the "kitchen," which isn't just the place at home where your mother and her sisters tended each other's hair but the place at the nape of the neck that's "Unassimilably African" because, says Gates, nothing can "de-kink" it. Kinks can be a trial in a world where the fluid, silken tress is beauty's trademark. From the Sixties through the Eighties, if a black woman straightened her hair or wore extensions or a weave she was routinely accused of hating herself or insulting her race--the righteous and the rappers loved to diss fake or processed hair. Having naturally straight "good hair" has never been a picnic, either. Even if the "lucky" woman's friends weren't resentful, she missed out on the intimacy and catharsis of hair-wailing sessions, and if she decided on a short style she was said to have thrown her luck away. Opinions are still divided, and everyone in these pages has a different one, whether the writer is Alice Walker or the great-great-granddaughter of Madam C.J. Walker, America's first black woman millionaire, whose hair care system gave dignified employment to thousands of impoverished women during Jim Crow times. Angela Davis discusses the Afro that made her a media icon, and bell hooks argues that hair-straightening is not about wanting to be white but about longing to grow up--the practice marks the graduation from braided girlhood into womanhood. Art historian Judith Wilson links the pompadours, hair extensions, turbans, and long fingernails popular in some American communities to African aesthetic traditions in which the self is ritually extended through deliberate overabundance and artifice in bodily decoration. Cherilyn Wright, in "If You Let Me Make Love to You, Then Why Can't I Touch Your Hair?" offers the hilarious survey she took among her friends, male and female, about how they handle lovemaking when a hot, damp breath can snap a woman's expensively sleeked hairstyle right back into its original "b-b's." The book has a marvelous array of photographs, from archive-quality portraits of 19th-century toddlers to Topsy cartoons and Aunt Jemima ads, to Ugandan foreign minister Elizabeth Bagaaya in splendid basket-braids. A New York City matron wears a Muslim head-wrap, and Grace Jones a gorgeous fade. Whoopi Goldberg sports a spoofy yard-long platinum wig. Best of all, Tenderheaded brings to life the millions of women who give each other their touch and their attention (if sometimes also heartaches or a headache) through the intimate rituals of washing, combing, trimming, oiling, braiding, pressing, winding, wrapping--caring for--each other's hair.