Me, My Hair, and I: Twenty-seven Women Untangle an Obsession

I had no idea there was so much to say about hair. Wow! This was an eye-opener for me, since I'm that someone who just washes and goes. As I was reading these various women's stories, I thought about my past hairdos and remembered many stories that I have myself. I remember going from long hair to super short abruptly, the one time my grandma bleached my hair and how much I hated it until she put a golden blonde rinse on it, my perm in the 80's when I was going to be a high school freshman and had to swim in PE, and of course the hours I spent before school each morning curling and feathering my hair. I'm sure there are many more stories, but now I'm pretty low maintenance. Anyway, this was a fun book to read and I found myself resonating with a few ladies more than others.
Thank you LibraryThing for this advanced copy and the opportunity to read and review this book. ( )

I enjoyed this book, much as I thought I would, but one creeping thing started to bother me about 1/3 of the way through and it just ruined the whole experience - nearly every one of the contributors lives in New York. It just gives a very exclusive feel to a book I thought was supposed to be inclusive - all the various experiences women have with their hair.

There are some good pieces here, Deborah Tannen's is particularly excellent and Marita Golden, Ru Freeman, and Adriana Trigiani also impressed. But the vast majority of these essays are the reminiscences of middle class white women of a certain age (often Jewish), and as a result there is a repetitiveness that makes this a bit of a slog. I am a middle class Jewish white woman of a certain age. My mother told me how ugly my hair was pretty much daily until the day she died. Through my teen years (until I put my foot down in 11th grade) she took me to a straightening place in a particularly rough Detroit neighborhood to try to make it less horrible. After straightening it really was ugly. As an adult I have come to kind of love my hair, and like many of the authors in this anthology, that evolution dovetails with a broader acceptance of self. Certainly there were many points on which I connected to the pieces, but that still doesn't make the 5th story about how someone had their mother iron their hair on an ironing board more appealing. If I was not reading this for the Book Riot challenge I imagine I would have abandoned ship. 300 pages on feelings about hair is just more than I can take. YMMV ( )

A few years ago when I heard about this book on Book Riot I was really excited and felt a deep sense of comradery...even though I hadn't read the collection yet. My own hair journey has been an up and down 'adventure'. Before I found my own copy of this it gave me pause from time to time to think of my own essay and what I would say. I may eventually embark on that writing venture.

I liked many and loved most (if not all) of the essays in this collection. Some may think an entire collection of essays about hair is ridiculous, but honestly hair is a unique creature all its own. How it captivates our world, how it is a banner of who we are, and how the journey is not fun, but worth finding common ground no matter our origin/background. This read made me grateful and put me at ease about my own life. ( )

[I received this book for free as part of LibraryThing.com's Early Reviewer program. All thoughts are my own.]

I thought this was a great concept and a good book. Something seemingly so insignificant tells so much about a person, a family, a culture. Some of it was a little repetitive, but I guess that should be expected. Overall, I enjoyed the read. ( )