"Your Hair Ain't Naughty:": Representations of Women in Rita Williams-Garcia's Novels

"I'd asked Cecile if I could use her hot comb to press our hair, seeing how knotty it got. … She'd said, 'Naughty? Your hair ain't naughty. It ain't misbehaving. It's doing what God meant it to do.'"

(OCS 153)

In Rita Williams-Garcia's One Crazy Summer (2010), eleven-year-old Delphine Gaither ponders her birthmother Cecile's directive to challenge ill-conceived ideals about symbols of beauty such as hair texture. Cecile, who wears braids, suggests that such damaging beliefs can adversely impact Delphine's self-esteem and identity as a young Black girl. As the passage continues, Delphine puts this notion alongside what she has learned from her grandmother: "That would have been news to Big Ma. We never entered the house of God without our hair pressed and smelling of Dixie Peach hair grease" (153). While this excerpt illustrates many of the seemingly opposing messages concerning Black womanhood that Delphine is asked to digest and adopt throughout One Crazy Summer and its companion novels, P.S. Be Eleven (2013) and Gone Crazy in Alabama (2015), Cecile and Big Ma's comments also illustrate an overarching goal of Black women role models: to teach Black girls how to be strong, to both live in a racist society and resist it (Collins 183).

Across the trilogy, Williams-Garcia engages with ideals related to Black feminism that are grounded in historical experiences such as slavery, reconstruction, and liberation movements, which all contributed to the strong Black woman stereotype. Patricia Hill Collins argues that within Black feminist thought, contradictory teachings, like those espoused by the women in Williams-Garcia's novels, are soundings Black girls use to navigate their own sense of self (185). We are most interested in the ways the trilogy asks readers to look beyond stereotypes about Black womanhood, particularly the strong Black woman construct, and consider how these prominent women in Delphine's life help shape her identity. We posit that an understanding of the three women in the novels and their influence on Delphine's development is enhanced when readers centralize the complexity of how race, class, and gender have been at work in U.S. Black females' lives. We focus primarily on Delphine because she is the oldest sister, positioned as a woman-child reminiscent of many Black girls who have been "deprived of their sense of childhood" (Le Seur 168). We show that Williams-Garcia emphasizes the connection between Black girls and multiple models of Black womanhood, as Black women in the trilogy are diverse and contradictory, yet they are presented as essential to Delphine's socialization. Williams-Garcia's characterization of the women and of Delphine attests to the idea that multiple women often work together to shape a Black girl's pending womanhood (Collins 183). Additionally, through the women and Delphine, the novels also explore the hold the strong Black woman construct has on women and girls by illuminating its existence in the women and recognizing its emergence in Delphine.

It is important that we consider the women in Williams-Garcia's novels because they provide an opportunity to teach young readers about history and sociopolitical factors that impact Black women in the United States. Traditionally, African American literature for youth has documented experiences that prove entertaining, purposeful, and pedagogical (Bishop 242; Brooks and McNair ix; Johnson 2; Marshall 31). For instance, Dianne Johnson says, "One aim of many writers and other adults in the 'Black community' is that Black youngsters not merely familiarize themselves with or acknowledge certain historical realities—but that they identify with them in a heartfelt way. Literature is not just good stories, but stories that acculturate and that have the power to politicize" (55). In other words, African American books for youth often foster self-affirmation, develop historical and cultural knowledge, and promote imagining more expansive and promising futures (Bishop 242; Brooks and McNair ix; Johnson 2; Marshall 31; Rountree 10).

Elizabeth Marshall, reflecting on the dearth of literature featuring girls of color, maintains, "Young readers are consistently...