Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time

A biography of one of the most famous and outrageous black entertainers of the interwar years. Born in St Louis, Baker went to Paris in 1925 and became a star of the Folies Bergeres. Her appeal lay in her sexuality and in her colour: blackness was equated with a freedom and vitality lost to the white races. During the war she was involved in the French Resistance and later with Civil Rights groups in America. She achieved fame with her cosmopolitan "rainbow tribe" of adopted children. Phyllis Rose is also the author of "Parallel lives".