Dancing in the Dark
by Caryl Phillips
Publication Date: Oct 10, 2006
List Price: $16.00
Format: Paperback, 224 pages
Classification: Fiction
ISBN13: 9781400079834
Imprint: Vintage
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Parent Company: Bertelsmann
Description of Dancing in the Dark by Caryl Phillips
In this searing novel, Caryl Phillips reimagines the life of the first black entertainer in the U.S. to reach the highest levels of fame and fortune.After years of struggling for success on the stage, Bert Williams (1874—1922), the child of recent immigrants from the Bahamas, made the radical decision to don blackface makeup and play the “coon.” Behind this mask he became a Broadway headliner as influential a comedian as Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, and W. C. Fields, who called him “the funniest man I ever saw, and the saddest man I ever knew.” It is this dichotomy at Williams’ core that Phillips explores in this richly nuanced, brilliantly written novel, unblinking in its attention to the sinister compromises that make up an identity.
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