Darktown strutters
(Book)

"Darktown Strutters is the story of Jim Crow, a remarkable dancer, born in slavery, who performs in minstrel shows, South and North, during the furious times of pre- and post- Civil War America. His experiences onstage and off, are a mix of applause with mob violence, of love and loss, played against the grim laughter of a black nation within a nation finding its way to an ever-elusive promised freedom." -- Publisher's description.

"Early in his life as a slave, Jim Crow discovers he can dance faster and better than anyone, black or white. He joins Tom Rice's minstrel show, where every night actors don black face to play the fool before white audiences. Jim refuses to mask himself: "I don't like nothin' gettin' in the way of the skin that don't come off." The Civil War doesn't change a thing: America's promise of freedom applies only to whites. Jim finds a place in the Featherstone Traveling Theatre, a raging troupe of outcasts and freaks organized and run by two lesbian sisters. White farmers eventually torch the camp, and Jim moves on again ... It is the second recent attempt by an African American author to rewrite black history in a manner reminiscent of Herman Melville's Confidence Man"--Library Journal.

BSLW RECAT 2023