This research seeks to examine how authors represent Black/African-American beauty in children’s literature. To conduct my research, I have chosen to review Natasha Tarpley’s I Love My Hair and Carolivia Herron’s Nappy Hair in conjunction with Zora Neale Hurston’s young adult novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. The objective of my thesis aims to highlight the emphasis authors place on Black/African-American children’s hair and the cultural differences in their perceptions of Afro-beauty. Today, society expends extensive time and interest in outward appearances through media: television, radio, digital media, and fashion magazines. As a result, Black/African-American adolescent and teen girls become overly concerned with their beauty and face extreme pressure to fit into the dominant cultures definition of beauty: ‘lighter skin, slender nose, slim body frame, and straight hair.’ Black/African-American girls who fall short of the prescribed characteristics of beauty become psychologically impaired with their self-confidences; sometimes refusing to embrace their own features or invest extensively in beauty care products to conform to the dominant beliefs of beauty. I have provided a summary of the focused literature for the benefit of readers who not have had the opportunity to read the previously mentioned texts along with a sample lesson plan.

Submitted by Ricardo Cedraz Duque Moliterno (ricardo.moliterno@uefs.br) on 2018-02-01T21:55:58Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertac?o Cl?udia M P Boa Morte.pdf: 3690521 bytes, checksum: 079275279cb2559804cb37bff9ee0728 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-02-01T21:55:58Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertac?o Cl?udia M P Boa Morte.pdf: 3690521 bytes, checksum: 079275279cb2559804cb37bff9ee0728 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-02-16 / What are the senses? effects generated on black women from the notion of nappy hair on hair-focused Facebook communities? This questioning drives this research, which seeks to answer the question under P?cheux?s Discourse Analysis theoretical contribution. The proposal is to present the aspects related to the concepts of senses, ideological formation, discursive formation, interdiscourse, discursive memory and silencing, elements that are intrinsic to the notion of discourse and to the subjects that are discussed on Facebook communities. Black women occupy the place of the discourse?s object, which produces and reproduces senses based on certain conditions of production. Thus, on Facebook there is a competition between different discursive formations, allowing the resumption, resignification and rupture of historically constructed meanings about black women and beauty standards. Through the posts and comments on chosen communities, it was analyzed how social, historical and ideological issues permeate the discourses about the black women subject and the process of acceptance and / or rejection of nappy hair in the virtual environment, which reflects, in many aspects, what is present in the real environment. Senses that are attributed to hair do not refer only to the aesthetic, but to the way the image of the black women was socially constituted. / Quais os efeitos de sentidos gerados sobre a mulher negra a partir da no??o de cabelos crespos nas comunidades do facebook, voltadas para a tem?tica cabelo? Este questionamento fundamenta esta pesquisa, que busca responder ? pergunta por meio do aporte te?rico a An?lise de Discurso Pecheutiana. A proposta ? apresentar os aspectos relacionados aos conceitos de sentidos, forma??o ideol?gica, forma??o discursiva, interdiscurso, mem?ria discursiva e silenciamento, elementos que s?o intr?nsecos ? no??o de discurso e aos sujeitos que discursivizam nas comunidades do facebook. As mulheres negras, ocupam o lugar de sujeito do discurso, que produzem e reproduzem sentidos pautados em determinadas condi??es de produ??o. Assim, no facebook ocorre embate entre forma??es discursivas distintas, permitindo a retomada, ressignifica??o e rompimento de sentidos constru?dos historicamente sobre mulher negra e padr?o de beleza. Atrav?s das postagens e coment?rios nas comunidades selecionadas, analisou-se como as quest?es sociais, hist?ricas e ideol?gicas permeiam os discursos a respeito do sujeito-mulher negra e o processo de aceita??o e/ou rejei??o dos cabelos crespos no ambiente virtual, que reflete, em in?meros aspectos, o que est? presente no ambiente real. Aos cabelos s?o atribu?dos sentidos que n?o se referem apenas ? est?tica, mas ? forma como a imagem da mulher negra foi constitu?da socialmente.