A celebration of Afro and Asian hair in poetry and fiction. Twists, dreads, comb styles, weaves, fluffed, afro’d, dyed, treated: every style has its own stories, occasions and meanings.
With poems, couplets, stories, styling tips and an advice column for your follicular failings, this is a feast of a collection in which over sixty writers from all parts of the world celebrate the joys and relive the trials of hair.
You’re Blacker Than You Think
Jolivia Gaston
I
You go around thinking
You’re someone else
The next thing you maintain
You’re not black
Your skin is lighter
It passes the grade
Though your hair
Gives you away
Afro-curls
Long or straight
Your disguise
People see through it
II
What’s in your head
No one can read
Only in solitude
You admit the truth
Inside you
Blackness is growing
(untitled)
Basir Sultan Kazmi
Leiti theen ghataaen jin se rung
Muhtaaj-e khizaab ho gaey hein
The locks that lent their colours to dark clouds
Are now themselves dependent on dye.
