2009 IDEAS TO DESCRIBE Barack Obama are some of the bestselling things in the world. In Nigeria, the association of barbers convened a one-agenda congress commemorating Obama and a hairstyle, so eponymously named, had been invented: A certain fraction of hair would be left at the front of the head, and the sides and back […]
Tag Archives: hair
Imbolo Mbue’s Afro Gets Its Very Own Essay in The Guardian
Imbolo Mbue instantly won our hearts a few years ago when news broke that she’d signed a million-dollar book deal with Random House. However, months after the news about her book deal, there were no photographs of Mbue anywhere on the internet. Then one fine day, the Wall Street Journal did a feature on her, […]
Repost: Adichie Saving Black Women Fom White Women’s hair
About two months go, Chimamanda Adichie said to Claire Cohen of The Telegraph: “I have so many revolutions I want to launch.” Should we be worried that the queen of contemporary African fiction is heading for the hills with armed militia to launch guerilla attacks on the establishment? My guess is that there is no […]
African Novelistas on #TeamNatural
Natural hair seems to be the trend among African female writers. Chibundu Onuzo, Taiye Selasie, Chimamanda Adichie, Chinelo Okparanta and others are all rocking natural hair and are all the more stylish for it. To be honest, I would not have noticed if there hadn’t been that whole controversy surrounding Adichie’s hair campaign. Adichie has […]
Dread..Dreadful…Dreadlocks
My stylist cringes at the word dreadlocks. “Simply call it locks,” she would caution, “There’s nothing dreadful about locks.” This quarrel over naming is not trivial. She realizes, like most philosophers do, that naming is everything. But what if there are no locks without the dread in them? What if locks are locks only after the work […]
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