Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker In Her Time

ROSE, Phyllis

ISBN 10: 0385248911 / ISBN 13: 9780385248914

Published by Doubleday, New York, 1989

About this Item

First edition. 321pp. Illustrated. Fine in fine, price-clipped dustwrapper. Definitive biography of the entertainer during her years of fame.

Seller Inventory # 1814

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker In Her Time
• Publisher: Doubleday, New York
• Publication Date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0385248911
• ISBN 13: 9780385248914
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • African-Americana

About this title

Synopsis

Follows the singer's rise from poverty and obscurity to international stardom against the backdrop of 1920's Paris and a Europe in the shadow of Hilter, and recounts her later civil rights activism and many adoptions

Reviews

With the searching intellectuality that has distinguished her literary biographies, Rose ( Parallel Lives ) takes on what is for her a surprising subject: the life and work of American expatriate dancer, singer and entertainer Josephine Baker. Born in 1906 in St. Louis, Mo., Baker--whose roots were black and Native American--had endured the early departure of her father, abuse as a domestic servant in the homes of white people and the brutal East St. Louis race riots of 1917 before her childhood was over. The ethos of jazz--freedom--offered her a way out. Employed at 13 as a dresser for a touring black vaudeville show, Baker graduated into the chorus lines of other such troupes until recruited in 1925 to dance in a black revue to be launched in Paris. There her brilliantly uninhibited performances won her immediate and lasting fame ("Hips, stomach, and rump had never moved so violently"). Not simply the story of a complex and influential woman, this indispensable biography treats in full the two cultures--American and Continental--that formed Baker, and sets a new standard for critical studies of performing artists. Photos. First serial to Mirabella.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.