You Can’t Touch My Hair And Other Things I Still Have to Explain

I love Jessica Williams. I dug her when she was on The Daily Show, and I adored her in The Incredible Jessica James. When I heard that she had a show on HBO, 2 Dope Queens, I watched the first episode immediately and discovered her work wife, Phoebe Robinson, whom I do not know. So I immediately requested her book, You Can’t Touch My Hair And Other Things I Still Have to Explain, from the library and recognized the cover immediately.
I’m currently flourishing in a black women writing books renaissance and whenever I saw Robinson’s book, it was placed in the young adult section. I am not averse to reading books for children. I read The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia as an adult and not as a child because I was more adult as a child and thought fantasy was nonsense. When I saw You Can’t Touch My Hair And Other Things I Still Have to Explain. I superficially thought that I already went on my hair journey so I’m good. (Full disclosure: I still don’t actually know what I’m doing so practical tips are always welcomed).
I read You Can’t Touch My Hair And Other Things I Still Have to Explain in a few hours, and Robinson’s writing is more somber than she presents in real life. Her style is very self-conscious and reserved. The majority of the book feels as if she wrote it with a white audience in mind then switches to a black and biracial audience instead of just writing about her thoughts and her views for herself. It may not be fair to compare her work to other black women’s books, but I’m going to do it anyway. They were ready to write fully about their lives while simultaneously not disclosing everything about themselves, but it did not feel cautious, it felt free. There was actually a point in the book when Robinson admits that she used to do it, but she still does. It would have been better if she wrote a shorter book that was less measured than a longer book that does not have a unifying tone that flows throughout her more serious topic and personal experience essays.
Robinson clearly loves her parents, but she describes them like a resume-their profession and what they do for her. I don’t have a sense of her childhood at home, only at school and mostly in passing. Robinson is at her strongest when she describes her career in college through showbiz. If she could achieve Tiffany Haddish’s openness and Samantha Irby’s frankness then combine it with her own writing style, she could be unbeatable, but I don’t think that she is internally ready yet. Irby, who is not well known by any objective achievements outside of her written work, has her beat by a mile in her second book, We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. Essays, so if Robinson could harness her comedic success and charismatic presentation in her written writing style, she could become a household name.
Robinson clearly prefers to discuss popular culture so if she had restricted her first book to solely focus her humorous take on popular culture such as the objectively best moments in How To Get Away With Murder, then maybe I would not feel the deficiency in her book or would just praise it as entertaining, but she can do more, she just has not done it in You Can’t Touch My Hair And Other Things I Still Have to Explain. It is worth reading, but with a burgeoning availability of books written by notable black women, Robinson’s is near the back of the pack.