Not that I would have known what to do with it, not having had any daughters of my own, much less daughters with “black hair.” My son Toby has been keeping me up to date in his own crash course. Esmé has tight kinky hair, Etta fine hair, and Eden something in between, and each head of hair must be treated in its own way if it is not to become hopelessly tangled.
I’m thinking that some day, when they are older, the girls will thrill to Lucille Clifton’s “homage to my hair.” As with “homage to my hips,” Clifton turns a prevailing aesthetic on its head in what was her lifelong quest to support oppressed people feeling down on themselves. The poem appear in 1975.
homage to my hair
By Lucille Clifton
when I feel her jump up and dance
i hear the music! my God
i’m talking about my nappy hair!
she is a challenge to your hand
black man,
she is as tasty on your tongue as good greens
black man,
she can touch your mind
with her electric fingers and
the grayer she do get, good God,
the blacker she do be!
