Overview

In Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles, professor and author Bert Ashe delivers a witty, fascinating, and unprecedented account of black male identity as seen through our culture's perceptions of hair. It is a deeply personal story that weaves together the cultural and political history of dreadlocks with Ashe's own mid-life journey to lock his hair. Ashe is a fresh, new voice that addresses the importance of black hair in the 20th and 21st centuries through an accessible, humorous, and literary style sure to engage a wide variety of readers. After leading a far-too-conventional life for forty years, Ashe began a long, arduous, uncertain process of locking his own hair in an attempt to step out of American convention. Black hair, after all, matters. Few Americans are subject to snap judgements like those in the African-American community, and fewer communities face such loaded criticism about their appearances, in particular their hair. Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles makes the argument that the story of dreadlocks in America can t be told except in front of the backdrop of black hair in America. Ask most Americans about dreadlocks and they immediately conjure a picture of Bob Marley: on stage, mid-song, dreads splayed. When most Americans see dreadlocks, a range of assumptions quickly follow: he's Jamaican, he's Rasta, he plays reggae; he stinks, he smokes, he deals; he's bohemian, he's creative, he's counter-cultural. Few styles in America have more symbolism and generate more conflicting views than dreadlocks. To read dreadlocks is to take the cultural pulse of America. To read Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles is to understand a larger story about the truths and biases present in how we perceive ourselves and others. Ashe's riveting and intimate work, a genuine first of its kind, will be a seminal work for years to come.

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9781572847491

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I really do admire it. Bert Ashe is amazingly willing to acknowledge all of the ways in which underneath the dreads is just a guy with a mixture of identities, and that the dreads might appear to resolve such issues, but actually do nothing of the kind. I found Twisted deeply satisfying. By the end of the book, I felt as if I had been taken on a quite serious emotional and intellectual journey. --David Shields, author of Reality Hunger: A Manifesto and Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season A hilarious, erudite, obsessive compulsive rant through black bohemia and black style. --Trey Ellis, Platitudes and Right Here, Right Now I like the style, the moves, the sense of rhythm and riff and the seeming ease with which [ Twisted ]...pulls off some extraordinary effects. The plot is about dreadlocks, but at its heart Twisted is the narrative of the emerging and expanding self. --John Callahan, literary executor for Ralph Ellison and editor of Ellison's Juneteenth Bert [Ashe] keeps you intrigued and delighted throughout the book's various strands.... Twisted, at bottom, is an unusual expose of the African American male: whereas machismo, sexual exploits or political issues are usually at the forefront, Bert convinces us that his hairstyle is the central issue in his attempt to express himself and discover himself. You'll be surprised how much we learn about American culture through Bert's fascinating wrestling match with his locks. --Daryl Cumber Dance, author of Honey, Hush!: An Anthology of African American Women's Humor and From My People: 400 Years of African-American Folklore

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