Rooks, Noliwe M. : University of Missouri - Kansas City
Noliwe M. Rooks holds a B.A. in English from Spelman College and a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University
of Iowa. She is currently an assistant professor of English and the coordinator of African American Studies at
the University of Missouri, Kansas City. She was the associate editor of Paris Connections: African American Artists
in Paris, winner of a 1993 American Book Award, and has published in The Black Scholar, Sage, and the Iowa Journal
of Cultural Studies.
Review
"Rooks digs deep to describe how beauty and culture have politicized African American women and demonstrates
that Western definitions of beauty are often not endorsed by African American women. Compelling."
--Booklist
"Rooks deconstructs dominant cultural notions of femininity and/or beauty with humor, dignity, and a defiant
sassiness. Read this book!"
--Joanne M. Braxton, Frances and Edwin L. Cummings Professor of American Studies and English, The College of
William and Mary
"Hair Raising is insightful, engaging, imaginative, and even musical. Rooks harmonizes her voice as a scholar
analyzing hair with her voice as a black woman talking politics with other black women, in salons and parlors,
to the rhythms of combing, brushing, braiding, and straightening. . . . This is a must read."
--Gloria Wade-Gayles, Professor of English and Women's Studies, Spelman College, and author of Pushed Back to
Strength: A Black Woman's Journey Home
Rutgers University Press Web Site, November, 2000
Summary
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. She discusses the role
of Madame C. J. Walker and other African American women who manufactured and marketed particular beauty treatments
and the ways that they redefined beauty for African American women. Through advertisements that these women devised
and products that they developed, working-class black women began to "talk back" to the dominant culture
and to the men in their communities. Hair texture and length increasingly became signs of women's self-confidence
and symbols of economic opportunity and advancement.
Rooks explores the history of her subject in a way that no one has before. She brings the story into today's beauty
shop, discussing and listening to other women talk about braids, Afros, straighteners, and what they mean today
to grandmothers, mothers, sisters, friends, and boyfriends. She talks about her own family and has fun along the
way. Hair Raising is that rare sort of book that manages to entertain and to illuminate its subject.
Key Points
The first book-length work on this subject
A unique examination of the often ignored influences on current definitions of African American beauty
