This week, Aneta and Isaac talk with Destiney Kirby about her relationship with her hair as a Black woman in the internet-age, her complex interactions with her white mother, and the difference between independence and isolation in crafting the self. Kirby details a mosaic of family and societal pressures that contributed to her access to hair care and her ability to find and sustain community within her work in family medicine and public health.
"My hair could have been held in court as evidence of child neglect. My birth was preceded by an endless list of questions concerning paternity, but the dark, coarse corkscrews that sprang from my crown only served to lengthen the list." — Kirby, "On Hair Care," ROOM 6.23
