author of Dressed in Dreams: A Black Girl's L Tanisha C. Ford
"Natural takes readers on a journey across four continents to examine Black women’s hair care. Chelsea Mary Elise Johnson offers fresh insights on topics such as Black femininity, texturism, and the technologies of resistance. This book is a blueprint for studying the natural hair movement in the age of social media."
Kristin Denise Rowe
"Natural is an achievement, a cartography, and a love letter to contemporary Black beauty culture. This needed book crosses theoretical, disciplinary, and national borders to stitch together a diasporic, intersectional, and layered archive of the contemporary natural hair movement. In charting this movement, Johnson helps us understand ‘going natural’ in relation to longer struggles for racial justice, Black liberation, bodily autonomy, and ‘Black lives mattering.’ This book is a needed intervention that will be cited for years to come."
Maxine Leeds Craig
"From Atlanta to Johannesburg Black women are constructing a new body politics as they create and sell products, share techniques, flaunt their locs, and debate who belongs in the natural hair movement. Natural explores the meaning and politics of natural hair in the twenty-first century. This nuanced study of the politics of Black women's hair makes important contributions to studies of race, gender and embodiment."
Ingrid Banks
"Natural is a magnificent text. Johnson presents a remarkably insightful discussion of the natural hair movement through analyses that center embodiment, texturism, neoliberalism, entrepreneurship, and the green movement. By recognizing the natural hair movement as one that challenges mainstream conceptualizations of social movements, Natural will impress a broad audience."
author of From the Kitchen to the Parlor: Lang Lanita Jacobs
"Johnson says something new and unprecedented about the ‘natural hair movement.’ Love and nuance colors every page of her book, and we need both to appreciate the beautiful hard-won truths of Black women’s pursuit and engagement with their own ‘natural’ hair. I implore you to read this book!"
author of Sorry I Don't Dance: Why Men Refuse Maxine Leeds Craig
"From Atlanta to Johannesburg Black women are constructing a new body politics as they create and sell products, share techniques, flaunt their locs, and debate who belongs in the natural hair movement. Natural explores the meaning and politics of natural hair in the twenty-first century. This nuanced study of the politics of Black women's hair makes important contributions to studies of race, gender and embodiment."
Kristin Rowe
"Natural is an achievement, a cartography, and a love letter to contemporary Black beauty culture. This needed book crosses theoretical, disciplinary, and national borders to stitch together a diasporic, intersectional, and layered archive of the contemporary natural hair movement. In charting this movement, Johnson helps us understand ‘going natural’ in relation to longer struggles for racial justice, Black liberation, bodily autonomy, and ‘Black lives mattering.’ This book is a needed intervention that will be cited for years to come."
Tanisha C. Ford
"Deftly researched and expressively written, Natural takes readers on a journey across four continents to examine the practices and geopolitics of Black women’s hair care. Johnson conducted nearly 100 original interviews, using them to offer fresh insights on topics such as Black femininity, texturism, and the technologies of resistance. This book is a blueprint for studying the natural hair movement in the age of social media."
Kirkus Reviews
2024-08-28
A sociologist offers an exploration of the practices and politics that inform the modern natural hair movement among Black women.
In its malleability, writes Johnson, “hair almost always expresses social dynamics.” This is especially true for Black women, who learn from childhood that straightening hair is essential to “doing Black girlhood respectably.” Drawing on her experiences and on interviews with women in the U.S., Europe, South America, and South Africa, Johnson examines the politics of Black women’s hair in the context of the modern natural hair movement. She observes that during the Jim Crow era, for example, adhering to Eurocentric ideals of beauty helped Black American women better succeed in a society created not only to serve white people (especially men) but also (white) capitalism. “Going natural” during the civil rights era and experimenting with transatlantic Afrocentric styles in the ’80s and later became a way for Black women and men to express cultural pride. Johnson traces the return to natural hair for Black American and European women during the 2010s and 2020s to a worldwide rise in xenophobia. This movement saw transitioning, the act of purging straight hair, as part of a new politics of authenticity that privileges health, wellness, and self-care. The author further suggests that the modern natural hair movement, in aligning with other global ones like the green movement, has given rise to Black-owned “naturalpreneur” businesses committed to serving Black women worldwide but also circulating profits within Black communities. Ambitious in scope, this book interweaves personal, historical, political, and transnational reflections about Black women’s hair and beauty culture into a nuanced academic study with strong interdisciplinary appeal.
A provocative study about an overlooked but important cultural movement.
