Hot comb

Title:

Hot comb

Author:

Flowers, Ebony author, illustrator.

ISBN:

9781770463486

Edition:

1st ed.

Physical Description:

180 pages : chiefly illustrations ; 23 cm.

Contents:

Hot comb -- Lady on the train -- Big Ma -- Fieldwork follies -- My lil siser Lena -- Spaniard -- Sisters & daughters -- Last Angolan Saturday.

Personal Subject:

Flowers, Ebony-Comic books, strips, etc.

Subject Term:

Women, Black -- Social life and customs -- Comic books, strips, etc.

Women, Black -- Race identity -- Comic books, strips, etc.

Hairdressing of Black people -- Comic books, strips, etc.

Hairdressing of Black people -- Social aspects -- Comic books, strips, etc.

Hair -- Social aspects -- Comic books, strips, etc.

Beauty, Personal -- Social aspects -- Comic books, strips, etc.

Genre:

Autobiographical comics

Graphic novels.

Summary:

Hot Comb offers a poignant glimpse into Black women's lives and coming of age stories as seen across a crowded, ammonia-scented hair salon while ladies gossip and bond over the burn. The titular story "Hot Comb" is about a young girl's first perm--a doomed ploy to look cool and to stop seeming "too white" in the all-black neighborhood her family has just moved to. In "Virgin Hair" taunts of "tender-headed" sting as much as the perm itself. It's a scenario that repeats fifteen years later as an adult when, tired of the maintenance, Flowers shaves her head only to be hurled new put-downs. Realizations about race, class, and the imperfections of identity swirl through Flowers' stories and ads, which are by turns sweet, insightful, and heartbreaking. --

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Park Grove Library (Cottage Grove)	GRAPHIC FLO	Searching... Unknown
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury)	GRAPHIC FLO	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Stillwater Public Library	GRAPHIC FLO	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Appeared on best of the year lists from The Washington Post , NPR , The Guardian , and more! Nominated for an NAACP Image Award and Winner of the Believer Book Award for Fiction!

Hot Comb offers a poignant glimpse into Black women's lives and coming-of-age stories as seen across a crowded, ammonia-scented hair salon while ladies gossip and bond over the burn. The titular "Hot Comb" is about a young girl's first perm--a doomed ploy to look cool and stop seeming "too white" in the all-Black neighborhood her family has just moved into. In "Virgin Hair," taunts of "tender-headed" sting as much as the perm itself. "My Lil Sister Lena" shows the stress of being the only Black player on a white softball team. Lena's hair is the team curio, an object to be touched, a subject to be discussed and debated at the will of her teammates, leading Lena to develop an anxiety disorder of pulling her own hair out. Throughout Hot Comb , Ebony Flowers re-creates classic magazine ads idealizing women's need for hair relaxers and products. "Change your hair form to fit your life form" and "Kinks and Koils Forever" call customers from the page.

Realizations about race, class, and the imperfections of identity swirl through these stories and ads, which are by turns sweet, insightful, and heartbreaking. Flowers began drawing comics while earning her Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction, and her early mastery of sequential storytelling is nothing short of sublime. Hot Comb is a propitious display of talent from a new cartoonist who has already made her mark.

Author Notes

Ebony Flowers is a cartoonist and ethnographer specializing in qualitative research and evaluation, picture-based methods, curriculum studies, and STEAM education. She began drawing comics while earning her Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Flowers's exploration of black women's relationships to their hair is rich with both sorrow and celebration as it champions black womanhood and family ties. In a series of comics vignettes, Flowers journeys through a first salon trip, a long-running case of trauma-generated trichotillomania (obsessive hair-pulling), and the collision of pain and piety that is a beloved matriarch's funeral. How black hair is treated (literally and symbolically) becomes the lens to explore both oppression and community. In the title story, her mother frets over the loss of Flowers's carefree innocence as she receives her first perm, while another installment shares her younger sister's excruciating visibility as the only black girl on her softball team. Her portrayal of motherhood is particularly affecting: only in the company of other women, engaging in the intimate rituals of hair care, do mothers voice their joy, worry, and anger. The artwork is joyfully tangled, its densely looped lines creating panels that reflect the characters' crowded environs (with witty reproductions of classic hair care ads interspersed); Lynda Barry is credited as Flowers's mentor, and her style influence is apparent in this exuberance. Flowers's vibrant and immersive coming-of-age tales are set in a world that may often be cruel, but is never without communion (and some funny moments)-even if she's got to endure a few chemical burns along the way. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

Kinks, coils, and manes feature prominently in this autobiographical mash-up of hair-based stories. Flowers reveals a variety of narratives surrounding hair traditions from within the Black diaspora, from Baltimore to Angola. In these vignettes, chemical hair relaxers represent coming of age, avoiding swimming helps preserve a meticulously prepared hairstyle, and a variety of beauty ads promise consumers both natural and synthetic irresistibility. Flowers taps into the pride Black women take in caring for hair and the broad cultural milieu and conversations surrounding it. While the black-and-white artwork can be amateurish and the overall flow is uneven, the themes are certainly underrepresented within the comics tradition and should draw a greater audience for Black women's voices. Pop-culture references from the 1990s, such as TLC's Ain't 2 Proud 2 Beg and Arrested Development's Everyday People, will evoke warm nostalgia in the most senior millennials, though they might not resonate with younger adults. The work's embedded discourses of class, race, and internalized European beauty standards concerning good hair, however, transcend generations.--Katrina Spencer Copyright 2019 Booklist

Library Journal Review

DEBUT It's not just "hair," but a symbol of female beauty, incubator of relationships, lifelong obsession, race and status indicator. With humor and hard realism, extraordinary fictionalized vignettes testify to the uniqueness of black hair and the many ways it is experienced. As with fellow cartoonist Whit Taylor, Flowers's anthropology training shows in her eye for intimate detail and nuances of cultural perceptions. Her energetic, tangly ink drawings recall Taylor's and Lynda Barry's work. (LJ 8/19)

Available:*

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Summary

Author Notes

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Booklist Review

Library Journal Review

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