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3 books match the query 'Baker, Josephine'

cover of Into the Spotlight: Four Missouri Women

Into the Spotlight

Four Missouri Women

Margot Ford McMillen & Heather Roberson

University of Missouri Press, 2004

As a companion volume to their earlier book, Called to Courage: Four Women in Missouri History, Margot Ford McMillen and Heather Roberson’s Into the Spotlight provides the biographies of four more remarkable Missouri women. Although these women came from radically different circumstances, they all shared a common sense of purpose, determination, and courage, and each used her own unique position to empower herself and others

Sacred Sun, also called Mohongo, was a Native American of the Osage tribe in Missouri. In 1827, her people lost their land, their sacred places, and many of their traditions. Seeking answers to the dilemma faced by her people, and possibly aid from the French, she journeyed to Europe with a group of prominent Osage and a French entrepreneur. The harrowing events she experienced there would shape the woman she became when she returned to the Osage tribe, which had been forced to move to Oklahoma and was still struggling to survive.

Emily Newell Blair was born into a successful southwest Missouri family. Although she was born at a time when the contributions of women in the workforce were quite limited, she was encouraged by her family to get an education and expand her skills in writing and speaking. When women did begin to pursue education and careers, Blair was at the forefront, working tirelessly to secure voting rights for women. Eventually, she was elected to the Democratic National Committee and later poured her energy into organizing Democratic women’s clubs.

Josephine Baker grew up in segregated turn-of-the-century St. Louis society, which determined human worth by the color of one’s skin. Her mixed ethnic background left Baker feeling isolated both from her own black family and from white society. Driven to develop her own unique style, she became a star of song and stage, toured Europe, served as a spy, and was a fervent civil rights and antiracism activist.

Elizabeth Virginia Wallace, known to her family as “Bess,” grew up in one of Missouri’s most prominent families. She married a neighborhood boy—considered unacceptable by her mother—who would go on to become President Harry Truman. Bess Truman, called “the boss” by her husband, worked side by side with him, editing his speeches and providing advice and guidance through innumerable crises during and after World War II.

Into the Spotlight provides valuable new insights into Missouri and American history, as well as women’s history, and will be a welcome addition to the Missouri Heritage Readers Series.
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cover of Josephine Baker and Katherine Dunham: Dances in Literature and Cinema

Josephine Baker and Katherine Dunham

Dances in Literature and Cinema

Hannah Durkin

University of Illinois Press, 2019

Josephine Baker and Katherine Dunham were the two most acclaimed and commercially successful African American dancers of their era and among the first black women to enjoy international screen careers. Both also produced fascinating memoirs that provided vital insights into their artistic philosophies and choices. However, difficulties in accessing and categorizing their works on the screen and on the page have obscured their contributions to film and literature. Hannah Durkin investigates Baker and Dunham’s films and writings to shed new light on their legacies as transatlantic artists and civil rights figures. Their trailblazing dancing and choreography reflected a belief that they could use film to confront racist assumptions while also imagining—within significant confines—new aesthetic possibilities for black women. Their writings, meanwhile, revealed their creative process, engagement with criticism, and the ways each mediated cultural constructions of black women's identities. Durkin pays particular attention to the ways dancing bodies function as ever-changing signifiers and de-stabilizing transmitters of cultural identity. In addition, she offers an overdue appraisal of Baker and Dunham's places in cinematic and literary history.
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cover of Josephine Baker in Art and Life: THE ICON AND THE IMAGE

Josephine Baker in Art and Life

THE ICON AND THE IMAGE

Bennetta Jules-Rosette

University of Illinois Press, 2006

Josephine Baker (1906-1975) was a dancer, singer, actress, author, politician, militant, and philanthropist, whose images and cultural legacy have survived beyond the hundredth anniversary of her birth. Neither an exercise in postmodern deconstruction nor simple biography, Josephine Baker in Art and Life presents a critical cultural study of the life and art of the Franco-American performer whose appearances as the savage dancer Fatou shocked the world.

Although the study remains firmly anchored in Josephine Baker’s life and times, presenting and challenging carefully researched biographical facts, it also offers in-depth analyses of the images that she constructed and advanced. Bennetta Jules-Rosette explores Baker’s far-ranging and dynamic career from a sociological and cultural perspective, using the tools of sociosemiotics to excavate the narratives, images, and representations that trace the story of her life and fit together as a cultural production.

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