June 2- 8, 2005

artpicks

Cut to the Chase

by A.D. Amorosi

Books

Journalist Craig Marberry has a thing for the head. The top of the head, to be specific. Of his brethren and sistren in the African-American community, to be doubly specific. He scribed the weird and winsome Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats, a book whose take on religious and millinery traditions seemed so mythically and intrinsically intertwined that by Crowns' end, you thought he was talking about halos. In a far more secular — but no less holy — fashion, his new book, Cuttin' Up: Wit and Wisdom from Black Barber Shops (Doubleday, $24.95), explores the brotherly rhetoric and casual, caustic hang of the hair cuttery, both urban and rural. Rather than do much writing of his own, Marberry edits, letting his central characters from across the United States — customer Albert Ghee in Virginia; barber Vernon Winfrey, Oprah's dad, in Tennessee — do the work of a think tank, a race seminar, a Bible meeting and a comedy showcase. Preserving the witty oral tradition of black America (to say nothing of its earliest entrepreneurial endeavors), the tall, naughty tales of a barbershop's constituency present not only practical discussion of "razor line" trims and other tonsorial matters, but good gossip and history lessons. From tales of racist hangings and songs of praise to skull-skewering disses and snaps, it is the language of men at play, as natural, rhythmic and cutting as Mamet or LaBute. Or a pair of scissors, if you like.

Craig Marberry reads Mon., June 6, 7 p.m., free, Free Library, Central Branch, 1901 Vine St., 215-567-4341.