Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, black and mixed-race women from across the globe came together in Paris and New York to engage in an artistic, sexual, intellectual, and political revolution -the ultimate flapper girls, they molded and shaped Western avant-garde thought and nascent ideas about race, sexuality, and left-wing politics, as well as the rapidly changing, increasingly visible role of women in modern life. This biography uncovers the story of one extraordinary figure known as Elsie Houston, who was a Brazilian, mixed-race, classically trained soprano. Following her artistic and social networks from Brazil to Paris and then on to New York, author Adjoa Osei opens the door to an unexpected history of race, sexuality, and society during the twentieth century. Houston captured the Western artistic vogue for black exotica by restylizing Afro-Brazilian folk songs on elite stages. She performed in Portuguese, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Afro-Cuban Abakua, Afro-Brazilian dialects, and South American indigenous languages such as Quechua. Houston ran with the revolutionaries; she married the French surrealist Benjamin Peret and was engaged in the same political sphere as the Trotskyists. She performed in one of Paris' risque nudist cabarets, moved in the same social circles as the likes of Josephine Baker, and was photographed by Man Ray. After she moved to New York City in 1937, the press branded her folk songs as 'voodoo' and she became part of a bohemian set of figures who were connected to the Harlem Renaissance. Elsie Houston shines a spotlight on a largely forgotten Brazilian singer who embodied the modernist, cosmopolitan zeitgeist that connected Europe and the Americas.

About the Author
Adjoa Osei is a Research Fellow of History of Race at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. She is a cultural historian whose research is actively interdisciplinary, exploring themes that are at the intersection of performing arts, Brazilian studies, Afro-Latin American studies, and Francophone studies. Her research has been published in major refereed journals and books. As a BBC New Generation Thinker, Adjoa has a growing portfolio of public engagement and media work. Prior to her career as a public intellectual, Adjoa worked internationally as a showgirl.

Reviews
A great page turner. Osei's writing lets us eavesdrop on the artistic life of New York and Paris in the 20's and 30's through the story of Elsie Houston, a Brazilian mixed race opera singer. Fascinating as Osei sets this in the context of a discussion of race, its construct and meaning. I highly recommend. * Dame Sally Davies, Master, Trinity College, Cambridge University *
Elsie Houston's multiple intersecting commitments-national, racial, political and artistic-viewed against the background of the transatlantic modernist scene make her a uniquely complex and fascinating subject. Adjoa Osei's meticulous excavation of Houston's transnational career is deeply researched and compellingly argued, as well as eminently readable; it merits being referenced and taught widely. * Anna M. Klobucka, Commonwealth Professor of Portuguese and Women's and Gender Studies, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth *
Adjoa Osei's book is more than a scholarly biography of a pioneer; it redraws the astral map of Modernism, offering us views of new stars and new constellations. It also reads like a plan for a night out in a dazzling lost world. She supplies the playlists, the dress codes, the social and racial rules, the means to tell low dives from ultra-swank places - and makes us wish that we had been there to hear its music and see the dawn bright with possibility. * Matthew Sweet, writer and singer *



Book Information
ISBN 9780197693179
Author Adjoa Osei
Format Hardback
Page Count 208
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 467g
Dimensions(mm) 239mm * 164mm * 20mm