JOSEPHINE BAKER -- a gorgeous graphic biography of the great dancer and civil rights activist

Josephine Baker by Catel Muller (art) & Jose-Luis Bocquet (text) (2017, SelfMadeHero; 496 pages)

This is the latest graphic biography by French creative team Catel and Bocquet, 500 glorious pages of dancing and dissent dedicated to dancer, civil rights activist, supporter of the Resistance, first black star on the world stage and mother to the “Rainbow Tribe”: Josephine Baker.

Josephine was nineteen years old when she found herself in Paris for the first time in 1925. Overnight, the young American dancer became the idol of the Roaring Twenties, captivating Picasso, Cocteau, Le Corbusier, and Simenon. In the 1930s she rose to fame. From London to Vienna, Alexandria to Buenos Aires, audiences roared. After World War II, and her time in the French Resistance, she devoted herself to the struggle against racial segregation, publicly battling the humiliation she had for so long suffered personally. She led by example, and over the course of the 1950s Josephine Baker adopted twelve orphans of different ethnic backgrounds. They became the "Rainbow Tribe."

By the end of this amazing volume, readers will fall in love with a woman who was a victim of racism throughout her life and who taught a beautiful lesson to all with her decision to sing of love and liberty until the day she died.

The black and white illustrations in Josephine Baker are gorgeous. The book also includes an extraordinary timeline and a fantastic and complete appendix of biographical notes of main and secondary characters in Josephine´s story, accompanied by portraits, in order of appearance in the story.

A jewel. Don´t miss this book.


Find this title in our catalog: Josephine Baker

Recommended by: Maite

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