Twisted is part memoir, part history and part cultural critique. Bert Ashe (From Within the Frame), associate professor of English at the University of Richmond in Virginia, takes readers on a personal journey through his desire to grow dreadlocks, while investigating what they mean in American culture. Ashe focused on dreads for reasons that would take him decades to understand fully, but he feared that he would undermine the power of this distinct hairstyle. Would he be able to keep its "expansive, multilevel cultural resonance" or was he too conservative?
People project onto dreadlocks an assortment of cultural and historic biases and prejudices, and for some, the act of growing them becomes a kind of performance piece--a public presentation and platform of associated political ideologies. Ashe's tension is rooted in a sense of separate authentic selves: the responsible, mainstream black scholar whose life experiences fit the white American mold, and the radical intellectual who questions authority and takes pride in his identity as a black man. Through the exploration of dreadlocks, Ashe navigates race in what he calls "post-integration" United States. Dreadlocks are a counter to assimilation--permission to escape from white society.
This book is a personal stand, an anthem and a love song to dreadlocks. Ashe's story is one of yearning written with poetic frankness. Twisted aims to unsettle, discomfit and ultimately strip readers of previously held convictions. Ashe has a delightful, sometimes dark sense of humor, an academic's intimate curiosity and an obsessive's focus, all of which combine to make Twisted a joy to read. --Justus Joseph, bookseller at Elliott Bay Book Company