Bonding over Hair: The Educational Function of Literature in the Face of Afro-Textured Hair

Abstract

In a feminist pursuit to build bridges between groups of women across the divides of race, this thesis studies the educational functions of literature, in order to gain an understanding of what literature can do for amplifying a general understanding and acceptance of afro-textured hair. Informed by generalized beauty standards often based on white female appearances, a stigma towards afro-textured hair has remained a source of discrimination. Consequently, following into the footsteps of a history of theorizing aesthetic education, and informed by Gayatri Spivak’s notion of ‘playing the double bind,’ it revisits three well-read novels of the hands of African-American female writers: Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), The Bluest Eye (1970) and Americanah (2013). Going beyond a straightforward analysis of the representation of hair, this thesis searches for answers to how these text may - or may not - challenge a set belief and displace perceptions of beauty and hair. At large, this enterprise seeks ways for women to bond over hair, in moving them to realize their shared fight against a discourse that asserts oppressive beauty standards. As it will turn out, the double binds traceable in these literary works, stress the difficulties that entail the position of an individual within their larger context, reflecting a need to want to conform to ideals expressed by society and individuals in close proximity, as well as the inward struggles that this desire brings. In order to play these double binds in one’s favor, all three novels reflect self-love as the key to do so, albeit in different manners. This is able to contribute to the understanding and acceptance of afro-textured hair, in that self-love generates space to feel a freedom of choice with regard to how to wear one’s hair. The novels manage to transfer their double binds and their ways of playing it, through an unsettling reading experience deriving from its content and narrative strategies, that nudges the reader into a reflective attitude.