Chinelo Ezenwa 

Reading Intersectionally: Reading Oprah’s OWN Hair Tales through Other Feminist Eyes 

The paper argues that while the politicization of Black hair has been used historically to perpetuate anti-Black-women hair racism, discussing this issue through the lens of celebrity, western educated, or socioeconomically elite women further marginalizes other Black women. The paper is based on a decolonial critique of Oprah Winfrey’s Hair Tales (2022). While Oprah’s Tales adds much-needed visibility and non scholarly dimension to the discussion of Black identity reclamation, it excludes the tales of regular and poorer women who style their own hair, work in the billion-dollar transnational hair industry, sell their hair to survive, etc. Focusing on the hair experiences of diverse African and Black women (as seen through real-life interviews) allows me to invite them into the discussion and to offer a decolonial counter-narrative to an increasingly exclusive and celebrity style discussion on anti-Black hair racism. Furthermore, grounding my paper on Chandra Mohanty, Chimamanda Adichie, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Obioma Nnaemeka’s intersectional and negotiable feminist approaches also allows me to emphasize inclusion, political and socioeconomic equity, and the continued importance of feminist theorizing through diverse real-life and marginalized voices.  

Biography 

Dr. Chinelo Ezenwa is a research, education, and community engagement specialist, of Igbo, Nigerian origin. Her teaching and research centre on Black and diasporic studies, feminist studies, postcolonial studies, language teaching, applied linguistics studies, and community engagement. She also loves Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and contemporary adaptations of Austen. Her key research, based on her PhD studies at Western University, examines the complex and continued impact of 19th century missionary translations and colonial interventions on Africans. Other recent publication includes “What Indigenous Literatures Have to Do with Decolonization” (2023), “Re-thinking Colonial Missionization in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions” (2022), and “Living in this Black Body: Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me (2015)” (2020). Chinelo’s conviction in the importance of intersecting academia and the community is equally reflected in previous teaching and advisory work as well as present role as Assistant Professor in Black Atlantic Decolonial Literatures at Memorial University. She also currently serves on the board of ACCUTE (Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English) as member-at-large for the BIPOC Caucus.