Join us as we speak with Emma Dabiri, activist, educator, researcher, and author of Don’t Touch My Hair (UK) / Twisted (US), which explores the ways in which black hair has been appropriated and stigmatized throughout history. Emma shares her experiences with racism and sexism, the dangers of the commodification of beauty, and the importance of looking deeper than face value. We also touch upon a myriad of other topics including feminism, health and diet culture, beauty stereotypes, patriarchal norms, neoliberalism, COVID, and societal reform. 

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About Emma Dabiri - Emma Dabiri is a regular presenter on BBC and contributor for The Guardian. She is a teaching fellow in the Africa department at SOAS and a Visual Sociology PhD researcher at Goldsmiths. Her writing has been published in a number of anthologies, academic journals, and the national press. She lives in London.

About Don’t Touch My Hair: Don’t Touch My Hair - Straightened. Stigmatised. 'Tamed'. Celebrated. Erased. Managed. Appropriated. Forever misunderstood. Black hair is never 'just hair'. This book is about why black hair matters. Emma Dabiri takes us from pre-colonial Africa, through the Harlem Renaissance, Black Power and on to today's Natural Hair Movement, the Cultural Appropriation Wars and beyond. We look at everything from hair capitalists like Madam C.J. Walker in the early 1900s to the rise of Shea Moisture today, from women's solidarity and friendship to 'black people time', forgotten African scholars and the dubious provenance of Kim Kardashian's braids. The scope of black hairstyling ranges from pop culture to cosmology, from prehistoric times to the (afro)futuristic. Uncovering sophisticated indigenous mathematical systems in black hairstyles, alongside styles that served as secret intelligence networks leading enslaved Africans to freedom, Don't Touch My Hair proves that far from being only hair , black hairstyling culture can be understood as an allegory for black oppression and, ultimately, liberation.

Find out more about Emma: 

Twitter 

Instagram

Disobedient Bodies

Don’t Touch My Hair (book)

Twisted: The Tangled History of Black Hair Culture (book)

Guardian Articles

For Further Exploration: 

• Off Broadway Bar: https://www.offbroadway.org.uk/ 
• The difference between a bartender and a mixologist: https://abarabove.com/bartender-vs-mixologist/ 
• Yaeji - Korean-American electronic music artist:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCG0_rOGqzcs85BexeTx4MQ 
• Neoliberalism defined: https://www.britannica.com/topic/neoliberalism 

Afrofuturism - what is it? https://www.huffpost.com/entry/opinion-broadnax-afrofuturism-black-panther_n_5a85f1b9e4b004fc31903b95