You Can't Touch My Hair

You Can't Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain is a keenly observed, humorous essay collection from the celebrated stand-up comedian and WNYC podcaster (2 Dope Queens, Sooo Many White Guys), in which she discusses what it's like to be the black friend or labeled the angry black woman, how to cope with those who have white guilt, and, of course, why you can't touch her hair. Phoebe also comments on controversial topics and expresses the ugly truths in race, gender and pop culture such as:
 
#femalepresident: “When you get sworn into office, yell, “I’m a feminist,” and then throw your fist in the air like you’re Judd Nelson at the end of The Breakfast Club.
 
#staywoke: “If you want to know what a quintessential stay woke person is, then you don’t have to look any further than Janet Jackson’s character in Poetic Justice.”
 
#goodhair: “Black women will, through the course of a lifetime, spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on styling; black women clutch shower caps in their hands with the same fervor priests do rosary beads in an exorcism movie.”
 
#castingcalls: “Please, please stop describing a character as an “every-woman,” when in the character breakdown you go, “Someone like this...” and then list seventy-five white ladies, who collectively on their most tan day, are still lighter than a batter of buttermilk pancakes. Y’all know y’all don’t want me. I know y’all don’t want me. The jig is up.”
 
#NFL: “The NFL’s relationship with women is bad. Like final season of Dexter bad...women are ride-or-die for the NFL, yet the sport doesn’t seem to care how poorly its players treat women.
 
#catcallers: “I know you think you’re being persistent like in all those rom-coms where the basic plot is, “women have bird brains, so it’s up to men to charmingly badger ladies until they want to sheath your penis in their vajeen the way Tyrion Lannister does his sword into his holster.” But behaving as if you know what’s best for a woman...is not cute.”
 
As personal as it is political, You Can't Touch My Hair is an utterly modern essay collection: one that examines our cultural climate and skewers our biases, all told from Robinson's singularly witty point of view. You Can't Touch My Hair is not only hilarious, but is a conversation starter that turns a piercingly observant, funny lens on all the things she still has to explain.