Straightened. Stigmatised. ‘Tamed’. Celebrated. Erased. Managed. Appropriated. Forever misinterpreted. Black hair is certainly never ‘just hair’.

This book is about why black hair matters and exactly how it can be viewed as a blueprint for decolonisation. Emma Dabiri takes us from pre-colonial Africa, through the Harlem Renaissance, Dark Power and to today’s Natural Hair Motion, the Social Appropriation Wars and beyond. We take a look at everything from hair capitalists like Madam C.J. Walker in the first 1900s to the rise of Shea Wetness today, from women’s solidarity and friendship to ‘black people period’, forgotten African scholars as well as the dubious provenance of Kim Kardashian’s braids.

The scope of black hairstyling ranges from pop culture to cosmology, from prehistoric times to the (afro)futuristic. Uncovering sophisticated indigenous mathematical systems in black hairstyles, alongside designs that served as secret intelligence networks leading enslaved Africans to independence, Don’t Touch My Hair demonstrates that far from being only hair, black hairstyling lifestyle can be recognized as an allegory for dark oppression and, eventually, liberation.