Wash Day Diaries

Product Information

Each short story uses hair routines as a window into these four characters' everyday lives and how they care for each other.

Wash Day Diaries – Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith Provide Us Wash Day Diaries – Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith Provide Us

There’s so much to be said about the DSM-V, the diagnosis of mental health symptoms, race, the medical field, and the African-American community’s relationship with all of those things, but suffice it to say I was a little disappointed that Davene was not necessarily given the support she needed within her story. I very much appreciated this love letter to Black girls, their friendships, and their hair, and I can’t recommend it enough. Wash Day Diaries continues the story from her award-winning mini-comic Wash Day (also co-created with Robyn Smith), published in 2018 by her indie publishing company Black Josei Press.Each chapter of this book shares parts of each character's life and what is going on for them socially and mentally.

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A middle grade graphic novel about Marlene, a young girl who stops straightening her hair and embraces her natural curls. The interactions between Nisha, Davene, Kim, and Cookie aren’t used as opportunities to lob passive aggressive nonsense at each other, but rather are consistently genuine attempts to provide love and support.Robyn Smith’s art perfectly captured that feeling of a laidback Sunday with her hair care pages providing what I described as “almost rhythmic panel-to-panel storytelling in these sequences [which] infuses that sense of ritual with its own distinctive beauty, particularly in one very memorably crafted two-page spread that also carefully underlines the gradual passing of time involved.