| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Karen Sotiropoulos. Staging Race: Black Performers in Turn of the Century America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2006. Pp. xiii, 288. $39.95.

African American arts and culture have long been of interest to scholars, and Karen Sotiropoulos's book contributes to this discussion on several levels. Its hallmark is the focus on black agency, that African American performers were not merely serving at the whim of whites but rather actively seeking to establish their own paths. Many black composers and performers were searching for an "authentic" voice in turn-of-the-century urban America in an ongoing effort to define black identity as well as to reach out to both black and white audiences. The book's discussion of the careers of major figures in the musical and dramatic arts renders such characters three-dimensional. We read of the successes and failures of vaudevillians Bert Williams and George Walker, of composer Will Marion Cook, and (to a lesser extent) of singer Aida Overton Walker and dancer Dora Dean. Sotiropoulos concludes that these urban artists would scarcely have had the same urgency if their ultimate purpose had been merely to entertain. By bringing her subjects alive, Sotiropoulos presents the real struggles that they faced in attempting to negotiate the black and white theatrical worlds and their respective audiences.

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