Josephine Baker in Art and Life: THE ICON AND THE IMAGE New edition

Jules-Rosette (sociology and African and African-American studies, U. of California-San Diego) explores the career and legend of dancer, singer, actress, political activist, and philanthropist Baker (1906-75), who, like many African-American artists, lived mostly in France. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Beyond biography: a legendary performer’s legacy of symbolism  
Josephine Baker (1906-1975) was a dancer, singer, actress, author, politician, militant, and philanthropist, whose images and cultural legacy have survived beyond the hundredth anniversary of her birth. Neither an exercise in postmodern deconstruction nor simple biography, Josephine Baker in Art and Life presents a critical cultural study of the life and art of the Franco-American performer whose appearances as the savage dancer Fatou shocked the world.   Although the study remains firmly anchored in Josephine Baker’s life and times, presenting and challenging carefully researched biographical facts, it also offers in-depth analyses of the images that she constructed and advanced. Bennetta Jules-Rosette explores Baker’s far-ranging and dynamic career from a sociological and cultural perspective, using the tools of sociosemiotics to excavate the narratives, images, and representations that trace the story of her life and fit together as a cultural production.