Her wavy, shoulder-length hair was the colour of polished mahogany.

I was examining the perfumed, coloured candles guaranteed to bring good fortune with continued use when a lovely mocha-skinned girl came in from the back room and stood behind the counter. She wore a white smock over her dress and looked about nineteen or twenty. Her wavy, shoulder-length hair was the colour of polished mahogany. A number of thin, silver hoops jingled on her fine-boned wrist. "May I help you?" she asked. Just beneath her carefully modulated diction lingered the melodic calypso lilt of the Caribbean.

Some of us are happy with our African hair, thank you very much. I don't want some poor Indian girl's hair. And I wish to God I could buy black hair products from black people for once. How we going to make it in this country if we don't make our own business?

Even she hair itself rough and wiry; long black knotty locks springing from she scalp and corkscrewing all the way down she back... The only thing soft about Tan-Tan is she big molasses-brown eyes that could look on you, and your heart would beat time...

DeLois lived up the block on 142nd Street and never had her hair done, and all the neighbourhood women sucked their teeth as she walked by. Her crispy hair twinkled in the summer sun as her big proud stomach moved her on down the block while I watched, not caring whether or not she was a poem.