Description
Book SynopsisShows how black beauticians in the Jim Crow era parlayed their economic independence and access to a public community space into platforms for activism. This book argues that the beauty industry played a crucial role in the creation of the modern black female identity.
Trade ReviewWinner of the 2010 Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Book Award.
"A welcome relocation of the discussion of black women's beauty culture."--
Women's Review of Books"A meticulously researched, well-written, and cogently argued book that contributes to scholarship that complicates historiographical boundaries between business history, labor history, history of consumer culture, women's history, and the history of African American political activism."--
The Journal of American History "[Gill] impressively demonstrates how beauticians became an important part of the black economic urban infrastructure. . . . Highly recommended. "--
Choice"The scope of the material and interdisciplinary scholarship evident throughout the book makes
Beauty Shop Politics a comprehensive addition to the bookshelves of women's studies, African-American studies, and entrepreneurial studies, as well as to history, business, and political-science departments. It is a truly interdisciplinary endeavor."--
The Chronicle of Higher Education"A tremendous contribution to African-American history.
Beauty Shop Politics demonstrates the central role of black women in the history of black business and shows how black businesswomen challenged the dictates of black male leaders in the worlds of black business and civil rights."--Lynn Hudson, author of
The Making of "Mammy Pleasant": A Black Entrepreneur in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco"Gill has made a major contribution to our understanding that the beauty industry has been central to African American women's search for economic sufficiency and the struggle for all African Americans' political rights."--
American Studies "Gill's book is important. . . .
Beauty Shop Politics ... allows a glimpse into black women's relationships with each other, relationships that are simultaneously professional and intimate, in which black women are both producers and consumers, as well as active creators, on both sides, of spaces that are uniquely their own."--
The Journal of Southern History
