Hot Comb

$24.95
Type: Paperback
SKU: RC500

Hot Comb offers a poignant glimpse into black women’s lives and coming-of-age stories as seen across a crowded, ammonia-scented hair salon while ladies gossip and bond over the burn.

The titular story "Hot Comb" is about a young girl's first perm - a doomed ploy to look cool and to stop seeming "too white" in the all-black neighbourhood her family has just moved to. In "Virgin Hair" taunts of "tender-headed" sting as much as the perm itself. It's a scenario that repeats fifteen years later as an adult when, tired of the maintenance, Flowers shaves her head only to be hurled new put-downs.

The story "My Lil Sister Lena" traces the stress resulting from being the only black player on a white softball team. Her hair is the team curio, an object to touch, a subject to be discussed and debated at the will of her teammates, leading Lena to develop an anxiety disorder of pulling her own hair out. Among the series of cultural touchpoints that make you both laugh and cry, Flowers recreates classic magazine ads idealizing women's needs for hair relaxers and products. "Change your hair form to fit your life form" and "Kinks and Koils Forever" call customers from the page. Realizations about race, class, and the imperfections of identity swirl through Flowers' stories and ads, which are by turns sweet, insightful, and heartbreaking. Flowers began drawing comics while earning her PhD, and her early mastery of sequential storytelling is nothing short of sublime. From her black and white drawings to her colour construction paper collages, Hot Comb is a propitious display of talent from a new cartoonist who has already made her mark.

 

More Info:

MORE INFO:

ISBN: 978770463486
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Language: English
Age: Adult
Page Count: 96
Publication Date: Jun 18, 2019
Size: 6.51 x 8.92 x 0.51 in
Series: N/A