Bad Hair

Joe Lietzow

English 1300

Professor Tucker

13 December 2017

Bad Hair

In the essay In the Kitchen written by Henry Louis Gates he shows how African Americans can interpret their hair differently than others. They classify in the essay that their hair is bad hair because it is kinky and not straight. Many people in the story would come to Gates Mother to get their hair straightened. This reflect that they would rather try and be someone they are not than have the natural kinky hair. The essay helps expose that others trying to adapt to something that isn’t in their culture, by getting their hair straightened, referring it to politics, and having so called “bad hair”.

The concept of African Americans getting their hair straightened brings out the point that they don’t intentionally want to have kinky or bad hair. With them rejecting their bad or kinky they ae not accepting who they really are. By going to Gates Mother to get their hair straightened brings into account that they don’t like the way their natural hair looks. Gates mother would take a red-hot iron and do their hair. Gates in the essay states that “Slowly, steadily, Mama’s hands would turn a mound of Odetta kink into a darkened swamp of everglades” (Gates 293). With this process happening to their hair they swayed towards straightened hair which was known as good hair. Whites to them have the perfect “straight” hair which is considered to be good hair They didn’t so much want to be different, they wanted to fit in with the whites.

To more so fit in with the whites it started when the African Americans where slaves in the 1830’s. The white slave owners would give them a product that would make their hair straight and smooth. In reality, the product burned their hair off and left