As a Black man, I am real particular about who I let touch my head. I reckon that is because for Black people, our hair has always spoken in well-oiled tongues. On the plantation, plaited braids bound loc to loc. More, they connected Black bodies to a continent from which they had been pillaged. These heads cried out in throaty defiance against the suffocating conditions of slavery. By the dawn of the 20th century, chemicals seared our ancestors’ curls straight—a deed enforced by the imposing hand of Western beauty. Our flat hair questioned: how do we find space in a society supposedly free of shackles? Eventually, our hair would erect towards the heavens, transcending gravity with afros that exulted Black is beautiful. And damn beautiful at that.

Surprisingly, this forced reflection has given me a lot of peace, as I have increasingly focused on my mental health, grappled with omnipresence of white privilege, and leaned into the Black community around me. My hope is that as we think about where to go from here, we take some of these important lessons from November with us — that way we can heal, prioritize our community well being, and radically create spaces where Black lives do, in fact, matter.

On Thursday evening, author Robert Jones, Jr. and African American Studies Professor Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. sat down to discuss Jones’ new and freshman book, The Prophets. The material Jones traverses in his novel is formidable to say the least. Set on a slave plantation aptly referred to as “Empty”, two enslaved men named Isaiah and Samuel become unlikely lovers. And as their love faces resistance on the grounds of white supremacy, religion, and western constructions of gender and sexuality, they beautifully shake and transform the harmony of the plantation, nonetheless.