55 pages • 1 hour read
Anna Deavere SmithFires In The Mirror
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1993A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaAct III: “Hair”Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Act III, Scene 1 Summary: Anonymous Girl, “Look in the Mirror”
The interviewed is conducted on a spring morning with a black girl whose hair is straightened. The girl talks about looking in the mirror and at her parents and knowing she is black. She says that black and white are both beautiful, but that none of the people in her class are white; they are either black or Latino/a, andthe non-black studentsget mad if you call them Puerto Rican because they think Puerto Ricans are stuck up. She talks about the differences between the way Latina girls and black girls act, and how some of theblack girls copy the Latina girls’ clothes. She talks about how hairstyles are important to black girls. She concludes by saying that three girls from the Dominican Republic stick together and don’t copy anyone.
Act III, Scene 2 Summary: The Reverend Al Sharpton, “Me and James’s Thing”
The interview takes place on a fall afternoon in a suite of offices. Sharpton has straightened hair and is well-dressed. Sharpton talks about how James Brown raised him when his father left, taking him to the beauty parlor to straighten his hair. Sharpton talks about the issues Brown has overcome and how he feels like his hair is a tribute to “the father I never had” (21). Sharpton says his hairstyle is a personal thing between him and James Brown that has nothing to do with whiteness or race. He comments on how hairstyles have changed over the years, but how the hairstyle he shares with Brown has remained their personal connection.
Act III, Scene 3 Summary: Rivkah Siegal, “Wigs”
The interview takes place on a spring afternoon in the kitchen of a Crown Heights apartment. Seigal explains the different hair-based customs in different Hasidic groups. Lubavitchers cut their hair to two inches so that when you go to the bath, you don’t have to prepare before you’re submerged and all of yourself, including your hair, can be submerged, as is required. Seigal always wanted to get married, eager to cover her head, but it didn’t happen until she was older. She talks about how the wig allows her to always change her hair, but says that it also feels fake. When she goes to work, people think that she got a new haircut, but she says it’s not hers. She has tried wearing wigs and not wearing wigs, admitting, “[i]t’s been a big issue for me” (25).
Act III Analysis
All of these scenes express how race conflates with appearance, especially in regard to identity. Anonymous Girl talks about how appearance, like hair, changes in various racial groups. In contrast, Sharpton says his hair is nothing racial, while Seigal explains how the Jewish custom of wearing wigs influences her personal identity. In this way, identity slips between the personal and the communal via the mode of appearance.
This third act is divided into three scenes, just like the first act, “Identity.”Hair also discusses identity as the point of view changes from black identity to Jewish identity, much like in the first act. In this way, this section exists as a kind of mirror to the first act, reflecting some of the same ideas, though slight distortions do exist. These scenes present communal identity as defined by the Other, especially within the first scene. For Anonymous Girl, her personal Blackness is a reflection of the face she sees in the mirror, as well as a reflection of her parents’ faces. However, once she goes out into the world, her communal identity as black is defined in, and in part by, its opposition to Latina identity. In contrast, Sharpton tries to argue that his identity has nothing to do with whiteness, as his personal identity is not a reaction to whiteness but rather is a result of his personal experiences. In this way, he attempts to extricate his personal identity from his communal identity. Siegal, too, struggles with the impression of communal identity upon her personal identity.
