Eslanda
The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
Eslanda "Essie" Cardozo Goode Robeson lived a colorful and amazing life. Her career and commitments took her many places: colonial Africa in 1936, the front lines of the Spanish Civil War, the founding meeting of the United Nations, Nazi-occupied Berlin, Stalin's Russia, and China two months after Mao's revolution. She was a woman of unusual accomplishment—an anthropologist, a prolific journalist, a tireless advocate of women's rights, an outspoken anti-colonial and antiracist activist, and an internationally sought-after speaker. Yet historians for the most part have confined Essie to the role of Mrs. Paul Robeson, a wife hidden in the large shadow cast by her famous husband. In this masterful book, biographer Barbara Ransby refocuses attention on Essie, one of the most important and fascinating black women of the twentieth century. Chronicling Essie's eventful life, the book explores her influence on her husband's early career and how she later achieved her own unique political voice. Essie's friendships with a host of literary icons and world leaders, her renown as a fierce defender of justice, her defiant testimony before Senator Joseph McCarthy's infamous anti-communist committee, and her unconventional open marriage that endured for over 40 years—all are brought to light in the pages of this inspiring biography. Essie's indomitable personality shines through, as do her contributions to United States and twentieth-century world history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Eslanda "Essie" Cardozo Goode Robeson was the wife of the legendary singer and actor Paul Robeson. Yet, as Ransby, a professor of African-American studies at the University of Illinois- Chicago, shows in this passionate biography, Eslanda ("Essie" to her friends) enacted many roles. Though Essie was her husband's biggest promoter, indispensable as his manager in his early career, she also became well-known as an anthropologist, author, U.N. correspondent, powerful advocate for women's rights, and an impassioned anticolonial activist. Born in 1895, when opportunities for blacks were exceedingly limited, Essie finished college, headed the pathology lab at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, pursued a Ph.D. in anthropology, and traveled, often on her own, through South Africa, Uganda, the Congo, China, and Central America. Determined to rescue Essie from the shadow of her famous husband, Ransby acts as Essie's staunch advocate, setting her subject's remarkable life story against the backdrop of the major movements of the 20th century: the Harlem Renaissance, WWII, the cold war, African decolonization, and the beginnings of the Black Freedom movement. Although her husband's celebrity and her light skin allowed Essie access into regions of white society, Ransby highlights how Essie truly became a citizen of the world.
