Picture Book, Animated Film ‘Hair Love’ Focuses On Telling Stories Of Father-Daughter Bonds
“Hair Love” grew out of filmmaker Matthew Cherry’s desire to normalize domestic depictions of black fatherhood.
Summer Evans / WABE
Children’s books are often full of larger-than-life characters and fantastic scenarios. A new book finds both of those in a father and in a little girl’s hair.
The book is called “Hair Love,” in which the young black girl introduces herself, saying “My name is Zuri, and I have hair that has a mind of its own.”
The story was written by Matthew A. Cherry, a filmmaker, executive at Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions, and a former NFL player. He created the book along with illustrator Vashti Harrison.
It’s a simple story about an African-American father trying to do his daughters hair for the first time.
The book is based on a short animated film also written by Cherry which is in production now following the most successful Kickstarter campaign ever for a short film.
“All [Matt] had to say was ‘animated short film, natural hair,’” Harrison tells “City Lights” producer Myke Johns, “and I already knew what I needed to do.”
For the book, she created a look for the characters akin to the 3-dimensional look of a Pixar film. “Because we never get to see black girls in that form. I knew that people would be engaged in this and want to see more of it.”
The story was inspired by videos Cherry saw making their way around social media of African-American fathers doing their daughter’s hair. The book and the film grew out of Cherry’s desire to normalize these domestic depictions of black fatherhood.
“It was interesting—the videos with the dads and their daughters would go crazy viral,” he said. “I think because people aren’t used to seeing African-American fathers playing with their kids in this way.”
“Often filmmakers — particularly filmmakers of color — are burdened with having to tell all of our stories. And so if we want to just do a silly movie that’s a coming-of-age story high school story, people are like ‘where’s the message?’” Cherry said. “So the more we’re able to have variety in our storytelling, the better.”
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