UP AND OUT

BOOK DESCRIPTION UP AND OUT • DARREN R. KELLEY What if Black hair was never supposed to fall? What if one of its most remarkable qualities is its ability to rise? Up and Out examines the Afro not as a hairstyle belonging to Black women or Black men, but as part of a shared history of Black hair, identity, culture, resistance, creativity, and choice. Beginning with the physical character of tightly curled and coiled hair, the book asks why hair that naturally expands upward and outward has so often been judged by standards built around hair that hangs straight down. From African traditions and the rise of the modern Afro to texturism, Eurocentric beauty standards, workplace expectations, the commercial hair industry, and the health questions surrounding chemical straightening, Up and Out follows the forces that taught generations of Black people to negotiate with their natural texture. This is not an argument that everyone should wear an Afro. It is an argument against treating one texture as the standard by which every other texture must be measured. Our hair does not have to fall to be beautiful. It can rise.