Valide
by Barbara Chase-Riboud
ISBN: 0380704439
ISBN-13: 9780380704439
Format: Paperback
|
Customer Reviews
Be the first to review this book!
Bibliographic Details
Publisher: Harpercollins
Published date: 1988
Other Editions
Similar books
Hottentot Venus
by Barbara Chase-Riboud
From the bestselling author of Sally Hemings comes an extraordinary new novel based on the true story of Sarah Baartman, a South African herdswoman exhibited as a “scientific curiosity” in the capitals of nineteenth-century Europe. [end box] Barbara Chase-Riboud’s previous historical novels won her critical praise and established her as a writer who daringly transforms the hidden truths of the past into compelling fiction. In Hottentot Venus , Chase-Riboud recounts the tragic life of Sarah Baartman, re-creating in vivid, shocking detail the racism and sexism at the heart of European imperialism. Born in the colony of Good Hope, South Africa, in 1789, Sarah Baartman was taken to London at the age of twenty by an English surgeon, who promised her fame and fortune. Dubbed the “Hottentot Venus,” she was paraded naked in Piccadilly in a freak-show exhibition and subjected to the unabashed stares and crude comments of the British public, which resulted in a sensational trial for her custody by British abolitionists. Soon afterward, however, Baartman's keeper – who may have been her husband – sold her to a French circus owner. In 1814, her new owner took her to Paris as part of an exotic animal circus to be displayed to French high society. Baartman endured unconscionable exploitation and cruelty as medical experts and leading scientists touted her as an example of primitive evolution because of her genital “apron” and her prominent buttocks. In an unforgettable saga that ranges from Capetown to St. Helena to London to Paris and back to Africa, Chase-Riboud has fashioned a Dickensian evocation of this icon of scientific racism, whose body, sex, and brain were exploited, examined, and dissected to become a synonym of ugliness and brutality — the absolute negation of European beauty, which even today taints our Western concepts of humanity. Sarah, the tragic heroine, evokes nineteenth-century novels of the “other” such as Frankenstein , The Hunchback of Notre Dame , and The Nigger of the Narcissus . In Hottentot Venus , Barbara Chase-Riboud evokes this strange and moving story in the voices of Baartman and her contemporaries, combining years of research with the sensitivity and perceptions of a masterful storyteller to bring the story to life. Like Chang and Eng and the author’s own Sally Hemings and Echo of Lions , HOTTENTOT VENUS is a powerful, stark portrayal of the harsh realities of race—a stunning look at the cruelty of curiosity, colonialism, and its twenty-first century consequences.
The News From Paraguay
by Lily Tuck
For him it began with a bright blue parrot feather that fell from Ella Lynch's hat when she was horseback riding in the Bois de Boulogne. The year was 1854, and Francisco Solano Lopez -- "Franco," the future dictator of Paraguay -- began his courtship of the young, beautiful Irishwoman with a poncho, a Paraguayan band, and a horse named Mathilde. From Paris, Ella Lynch follows Franco to Asunción, where she reigns as his mistress. Isolated and estranged in this new world, she embraces her lover's ill-fated dream -- one fueled by outsize imperial ambition and heedless arrogance, and with devastating consequences for Paraguay and all its inhabitants. A historical epic that tells an unusual love story, The News from Paraguay offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of nineteenth-century Paraguay, a largely untouched wilderness where Europeans and North Americans intermingle with both the old Spanish aristocracy and native Guaraní Indians. The urgency of the narrative, the imaginative richness of its intimate detail, and the wealth of characters whose stories are skillfully layered and unfolded recall the epic novels of Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The News from Paraguay captures the devastating havoc wrought on both a country's fate and a woman's heart by ruthless ambition and war.
On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon
by Kaye Gibbons
Sprawling in its scope but heartbreakingly exact in its depiction of a family torn apart, ON THE OCCASION OF MY LAST AFTERNOON is a magnificent novel in the great Southern tradition. In the year 1900--on the afternoon she suspects might be the last of her long, eventful life--Emma Garnet Tate Lowell sets down on paper what came before, determined to make an honest account of it. Born to privilege on a James River plantation, she grew up determined to escape the domination of her bullying, self-made father, Samuel P. Tate, and ultimately seceded from his control to marry Quincy Lowell, a surgeon and member of the distinguished Boston family. But then came the Civil War. Working alongside Quincy, assisting him in the treatment of wounded soldiers, she witnessed scenes that would be engraved forever in her memory. And, before beginning the long journey of her own reconstruction, she must face the shame of her relationship to her "servants" and learn the terrible secret that shaped her father's life.
The Forest Lover
by Susan Vreeland
The award-winning author of The Passion of Artemisia presents a dramatic, fictional portrait of pioneering artist Emily Carr, whose fierce independence, boldly original artwork, and unconventional approach to life overcame the restrictions of late Victorian society to blaze a new path for twentieth-century women artists.
Slammerkin
by Emma Donoghue
Slammerkin: A loose gown; a loose woman. Born to rough cloth in Hogarth's London, but longing for silk, Mary Saunders's eye for a shiny red ribbon leads her to prostitution at a young age. A dangerous misstep sends her fleeing to Monmouth, and the position of household seamstress, the ordinary life of an ordinary girl with no expectations. But Mary has known freedom, and having never known love, it is freedom that motivates her. Mary asks herself if the prostitute who hires out her body is more or less free than the "honest woman" locked into marriage, or the servant who runs a household not her own? And is either as free as a man? Ultimately, Mary remains true only to the three rules she learned on the streets: Never give up your liberty. Clothes make the woman. Clothes are the greatest lie ever told.
|
|
Ready to buy this book?
Below are all of the copies of 0380704439 we currently have available for purchase, sorted by lowest price first. If you would like to refine your search, use the advanced options in the search box above.
|
|
1)
|
Valide
Barbara Chase-Riboud
Avon Books (Mm), 1988-04. Paperback. Acceptable. ( more information) Offered by The Book Stop (United States)
Favorite bookseller : you've previously added this bookseller to your favorites list.
|
|
|
2)
|
Valide
Barbara Chase-Riboud
Avon Books (Mm), 1988-04. Paperback. Very Good. Mass Market Paperback. ( more information) Offered by Noteworthy's Books (United States)
Favorite bookseller : you've previously added this bookseller to your favorites list.
|
|
|
0 items in cart
Muze Inc. For personal non-commercial use only. All rights reserved. Some content for books is owned by Baker & Taylor, Inc. or its licensors and is subject to copyright and all other protections provided by applicable law.
