Hairlore

1988, Remar Sutton, Body worry, Penguin (Non-Classics) →ISBN Barbers are the priests of hair lore, so you may listen to what they've learned from any confessionals, but don't automatically take their word as correct.

1992, Norma J. Roberts, Columbus Museum of Art, Elijah Pierce, woodcarver, University of Washington Press →ISBN More than a mere ornamental surface, hair and hair preparation are elements of an essential body of emic material referred to as African American hairlore, and it can be a near metaphysical index to one's very soul, being, psychology, […]

"Smoot documents his ... ah ... problem, one might safely say, with a three-volume history of hairlore, in which it is shown that abundant hair has always symbolized vitality, virility, the will to triumph, and its lack, poverty and impotence.

Baldness also has a further symbolic connection with one's restoration to grace. Giles Constable's magisterial study of beard- and hair-lore in the Middle Ages demonstrates that the shaving of one's hair could signify 'a separation from […]

[…] as much to my strong belief in the diaspora as a heuristic construct for interpreting much of African American expressive invention as it does to my larger, shared fascination for the powerful dynamic of hair-lore in African diaspora everyday life.