Extract

Shirley Graham Du Bois was a leading African American artist and political activist, yet many scholars refer to her only as W. E. B. Du Bois's second wife. The main accomplishment of Gerald Horne's astute biography is to rescue Graham Du Bois from oblivion, acknowledg e her remarkable artistic achievements, reappraise her controversial political record, and reconstruct the transatlantic black Left in the postwar era.

The book takes the reader from Shirley's upbring ing as a minister's daug hter in Jim Crow America to her final years in Egypt and China as a follower of Maoism. Horne has woven three themes into his narrative. First, he asserts the significance of Graham Du Bois's defining personal experiences—her veneration for her father, her maternal role in the family, her failed first marriage, and her feelings of guilt about leaving her children to their g randmother. Second, he tells the story of a struggling female African American artist in interwar Europe and the United States. Graham Du Bois wrote plays, composed an opera, and produced numerous semifictional biographies and a novel. Third, he traces her political development from her involvement with the Communist party to her leading role in Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana.

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