This book was published in 2016, and I just finished listening to the e-audiobook last night. I have 32 different feelings about this book! I found Robinson's tone of plain-spoken self-assurance refreshing. She's passionate, funny and expressive.
Of course, Phoebe Robinson talks about hair in this book. I already knew that it was socially unacceptable to ask an African-American if you can touch their hair, not that I'd thought much about it before. It's just that I'd read a Facebook post about in which an African-American woman complained about having had this experience--being asked by a white person if the white person could touch their hair--and that it had occurred in a library (which surprised me).
Robinson also talks, optimistically, about the future she imagines for her mixed-race niece. Early in the book she explains that there is no post-racial America. She also talks about the strain caused by being asked, often, by her white friends to interpret African-American culture for them. She also discusses, at length, an episode in which she asked a question of her director, as an actress, and was told to stop "being so uppity." She explained that she, as an African-American, had to make a careful calculus about whether to complain, given that complaining would brand her as an "Angry Black Woman," an common racist stereotype, and hurtful because it would lead people not to respect her, not to take her seriously, and not to listen to her. That's a classic Catch-22: if you use your voice, you risk not being heard, and one way of being silenced or invalidated is being labeled an "angry black woman."
The letter to her niece occurs toward the end of the book. What Robinson had to say about the aspirations of her parents and how they would influence her niece was very moving. She said her parents were hard-working people, and that they would inspire their granddaughter to try to do her very best.
Phoebe Robinson's second book, which was published in 2019, was called Everything's Trash, but That's Okay. Her new book, Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes: Essays, will come out in October of this year.
At the time You Can't Touch My Hair was published, she was producing a podcast called 2 Dope Queens, with Jessica Williams, which became a show on HBO and which can now be viewed on YouTube.
Currently, Comedy Central is broadcasting a show starring Phoebe Robinson and produced by her production company, Doing the Most: with Phoebe Robinson (https://www.cc.com/shows/doing-the-most-with-phoebe-robinson), and it is possible to pay to see it on the Internet. The show was produced by Robinson's own production company.
Before I read this book, I didn't know what a microagression was. But because of some research I'm doing, I recently found out more about it by watching these three videos on YouTube, and I recommend them to you:
Understanding Microaggressions (Wisconsin Technical College System)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4N50b76cZc
Responding to Microaggressions
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=responding+to+microaggressions+WTCS
Microaggressions in the Classroom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZahtlxW2CIQ
An interesting thing happened to me because of YouTube's algorithm. After I'd finished watching Microaggressions in the Classroom on YouTube, YouTube started showing me other videos on related subjects. One was "White Fragility," remarks given by Dr. Robin DiAngelo who works as a consultant, and who has written a book called White Fragility. This helped me to understand so much more about some of the issues that Robinson raises. For instance, Robinson talks about how expensive her hair care is, and how many hours she spends at the hairdresser's when she's getting her hair done. But what she doesn't say and what Robin DiAngelo does say is that it's only for the last few decades that African-Americans have had power over their own bodies.
"White Fragility"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45ey4jgoxeU
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