TENDERHEADED

Reflecting on family, career, passions, and a complicated racial identity.

A writer, creative director, and producer, Davis co-wrote the memoir The Meaning of Mariah Carey. She has also appeared on CNN to dissect racial controversies. The author came by her expertise in these subjects from a lifetime of living in a particular body: “A [societal] scaffolding of physical preferences…holds me hostage by virtue of my lighter-than-light skin, my not-short blond hair and hazel eyes. Attributes…that stood as irrefutable evidence that I was part other—Black and,” she writes. “I do not hate my skin, and certainly I do not hate my hair, but I do hate that my skin and hair confound other Black girls.” For the most part, Davis doesn’t dwell on this sensitive dynamic. Keenly observant and with exceptional taste, she spent most of her career putting her talents to use in the world of Black women’s fashion magazines, a small but influential (if grossly underappreciated) sector of New York’s publishing industry. Through her work as a stylist, she has worked with great artists and creators like Abbey Lincoln, Maya Angelou, Diana Ross, Prince, and Beyoncé. Though Davis’ anecdotes of close encounters with the great and famous are certainly entertaining (and occasionally juicy), it’s the power and energy of her writing that make her book such a pleasurable read. Organized in three sections—“the child,” “the alcoholic,” and “the writer”—the narrative moves mostly chronologically, with frequent tangents, skipping ahead and behind, adding color and context.

Jazzy, improvisational, and deeply personal.