Composition in black and white : the life of Philippa Schuyler / Kathryn Talalay.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Talalay, Kathryn M.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Schuyler, Philippa, 1932-1967.

Schuyler, Philippa.

Pianists--United States--Biography.

Pianists.

United States.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xvi, 317 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, 1995.

Summary:

George Schuyler, a renowned and controversial black journalist of the Harlem Renaissance, and Josephine Cogdell, a blond, blue-eyed Texas heiress and granddaughter of slave owners, believed that intermarriage would "invigorate" the races, thereby producing extraordinary offspring. Their daughter, Philippa Duke Schuyler, became the embodiment of this theory, and they hoped she would prove that interracial children represented the solution to America's race problems.

Able to read and write at the age of two and a half, a pianist at four, and a composer by five, Philippa was often compared to Mozart. During the 1930s and '40s she graced the pages of Time and Look magazines, the New York Herald Tribune, and The New Yorker. Philippa grew up under the adoring and inquisitive eyes of an entire nation and soon became the role model and inspiration for a generation of African-American children. But as an adult she mysteriously dropped out of sight, leaving America to wonder what had happened to the "little Harlem genius." Suffering the double sting of racism and gender bias, Philippa had been rejected by the elite classical music milieu in the United States and forced to find an audience abroad, where she flourished as a world-class performer and composer. She traveled throughout South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia, performing for kings, queens, and presidents. By then Philippa had added a second career as an author and foreign correspondent reporting on events around the globe--from Albert Schweitzer's leper colony in Lamberene to the turbulent Asian theater of the 1960s.

But behind the scrim of adventure, glamour, and intrigue was an American outcast, a woman constantly searching for home and self. "I am a beauty--but I'm half colored... so I'm always destined to be an outsider," she wrote in her diary. In a last attempt to reclaim an identity, she began to "pass" as Caucasian. Adopting an Iberian-American heritage, she reinvented herself as Felipa Monterro, an ultra-right conservative who wrote and lectured for the John Birch Society. Her experiment failed, as had her parents' dream of smashing America's racial barriers. But at the age of thirty five, Philippa finally began to embark on a racial catharsis: She was just beginning to find herself when on May 9, 1967, while on an unauthorized mission of mercy, her life was cut short in a helicopter crash over the waters of war-torn Vietnam.

Contents:

I From Texas to Harlem with Love

1 Beginning 11

2 Taboo 16

3 Interlude 32

4 Miscegenation 38

II Hybrid Vigor

5 All-American Newsreel 45

6 Psychological Care of Infant and Child 55

7 Sergeant Jackson 62

8 George Schuyler, Investigative Reporter 71

9 The Prodigy Puppet 76

10 Godowski, Et Al. 85

11 Black and Conservative 92

12 Manhattan Nocturne 98

13 Scrapbooks 103

14 Rumpelstiltskin 105

15 Farewell 113

16 South of the Border 122

III Around-the-World Suite

17 United States and Europe 135

18 The Lion of Judah 142

19 Winter's Night 147

20 Caprice 153

21 Suite Africaine 159

22 The Lamb Who Smoked a Pipe 168

23 No Women's Country 171

24 Tour du Monde 176

25 Rhapsody of Youth 183

26 What Is Africa to Me? 188

27 "Je meure pour un homme" 193

28 Who Killed the Congo? 201

29 Jungle Saints 212

IV Flight-from-Self

30 Felipa Monterro y Schuyler 221

31 L'Affaire Raymond 231

32 Dennis Gray Stoll 239

33 Dennis Redux 246

34 Tijuana 255

35 Sic Transit 261

36 Good Men Die 265.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0195096088

OCLC:

31867291