Composition in Black and White: The Life of Philippa Schuyler - Hardcover

Talalay, Kathryn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195096088 ISBN 13: 9780195096088

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1995

Synopsis

George Schuyler, a renowned and controversial black journalist of the Harlem Renaissance, and Josephine Cogdell, a blond, blue-eyed Texas heiress and granddaughter of slave owners, believed that intermarriage would "invigorate" the races, thereby producing extraordinary offspring. Their daughter, Philippa Duke Schuyler, became the embodiment of this theory, and they hoped she would prove that interracial children represented the final solution to America's race problems.
Able to read and write at the age of two and a half, a pianist at four, and a composer by five, Philippa was often compared to Mozart. During the 1930s and 40s she graced the pages of Time and Look magazines, the New York Herald Tribune, and The New Yorker. Philippa grew up under the adoring and inquisitive eyes of an entire nation and soon became the role model and inspiration for a generation of African-American children. But as an adult she mysteriously dropped out of sight, leaving America to wonder what had happened to the "little Harlem genius." Suffering the double sting of racism and gender bias, Philippa had been rejected by the elite classical music milieu in the United States and forced to find an audience abroad, where she flourished as a world-class performer and composer. She traveled throughout South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia performing for kings, queens, and presidents. By then Philippa had added a second career as an author and foreign correspondent reporting on events around the globe--from Albert Schweitzer's leper colony in Lamberéné to the turbulent Asian theater of the 1960s. She would give a command performance for Queen Elisabeth of Belgium one day, and hide from the Viet Cong among the ancient graves of the Annam kings another.
But behind the scrim of adventure, glamour, and intrigue was an American outcast, a woman constantly searching for home and self. "I am a beauty--but I'm half colored...so I'm always destined to be an outsider," she wrote in her diary. Philippa tried to define herself through love affairs, but found only disappointment and scandal. In a last attempt to reclaim an identity, she began to "pass" as Caucasian. Adopting an Iberian-American heritage, she reinvented herself as Felipa Monterro, an ultra-right conservative who wrote and lectured for the John Birch Society. Her experiment failed, as had her parents' dream of smashing America's racial barriers. But at the age of thirty five, Philippa finally began to embark on a racial catharsis: She was just beginning to find herself when on May 9, 1967, while on an unauthorized mission of mercy, her life was cut short in a helicopter crash over the waters of war-torn Vietnam.
The first authorized biography of Philippa Schuyler, Composition in Black and White draws on previously unpublished letters and diaries to reveal an extraordinary and complex personality. Extensive research and personal interviews from around the world make this book not only the definitive chronicle of Schuyler's restless and haunting life, but also a vivid history of the tumultuous times she lived through, from the Great Depression, through the Civil Rights movement, to the Vietnam war. Talalay has created a highly perceptive and provocative portrait of a fascinating woman.

About this title

About the Author

About the Author:
Kathryn Talalay, the recipient of a 1988-1989 Rockefeller Foundation Grant, was on the faculty of Indiana University for fourteen years. The author of numerous articles and a contributor to the Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, she is currently archivist and editor at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City, where she lives with her husband Frank Ponzio, a jazz pianist and composer.

Reviews

A child prodigy born in Harlem to a noted black journalist and a domineering white mother, classical musician and roving journalist Schuyler (1931-1967) became a 1940s and 1950s racial icon (and inspiration for blacks to take piano lessons). The author describes mother Josephine's boldness in crossing the race barrier and re-creates her assiduous efforts to develop young Philippa's faculties. Haunted by American racism, Philippa found refuge, on tour, in Latin America's more relaxed racial climate; she later had a love-hate relationship with Africa and eventually attempted to perform under an assumed Spanish identity. Further pressured by a troubled love life, Schuyler nonetheless also developed as a writer of both fiction and nonfiction (Who Killed the Congo?), advancing her once-liberal father's right-wing views. She died in a helicopter crash in Vietnam, where she had gone to write. Talalay, assistant archivist/editor at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City, has produced an incisive and readable biography of an intriguing figure.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Philippa Schuyler led an accomplished, complex, and tragic life. She was the first "colored girl" to achieve national prominence at an early age. Growing up in the 1940s and 1950s was difficult for an African American female who not only was the daughter of an interracial union but also a child prodigy, both intellectually and musically. Her father, George Schuyler, a noted black writer, influenced her thinking and political views. Her mother, Josephine Cogdell, daughter of a white, wealthy Texas family, sacrificed her position to marry the infamous Messenger editor, Schuyler. Philippa's musical career, concertizing and composing, lovers, associates, and friends spanned continents. She exerted an influence on the culture of her time and was a role model for children of that era. Her inspiration transcended music--one woman noted that after attending her performance, she decided to become a writer. In her twenties, Philippa became an author of fiction and nonfiction and a roving reporter spending a great deal of time relating events of the Vietnam War. Her untimely death in 1967 marked the tragic end of Philippa's duality: in her careers, music and journalism, and identity, black or white. Lillian Lewis

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195096088
• ISBN 13: 9780195096088
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 360