In men, red hair is bad news, not just ugly but slightly contemptible. As Roach rightly observes, red hair's meaning divides - radically - along gender lines. Woman, incidentally, is mostly what this book is about. "In all, she is an icon in the history of the world of red hair," Roach writes, "the oldest female cornerstone on which to build an argument for the evil and sexually charged identity of the red-haired woman." I didn't realize that Judas was commonly depicted as a redhead or that the mark God put on Cain was red hair.Īnd then there's Lilith, Adam's pre-Eve first wife, portrayed in art and popular culture as a redhead. Take, for example, red hair in the Western religious tradition. But it's richly salted with fascinating cultural lore, and an engaging read whether you're a carrot-top or not. It's underdeveloped in places, and in places simply hard to follow. Part history, part science, part memoir, the book is a weaving, wandering thing, personal and essayistic. In The Roots of Desire she ruminates about red hair and our ideas about it.
Her red hair is the first thing she mentions when describing herself.
Marion Roach, a writer based in upstate New York, is a member of the tribe.
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