Nalo Hopkinson
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Jeanne Duval was the lifelong romantic association of French poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire. One of Les fleurs du mal poems, "Une charogne," was dedicated to Jeanne Duval, a second-tier mulatto actress.
Jeanne Duval was also served as a main character in Carribean Author, Nalo Hopkinson's, Salt Roads a work of historic fiction. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Duval [Dec 2004]
- "He had for many years a liaison with a colored woman, whom he helped to the end of his life in spite of her gross conduct." --1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
I realize that as far as 1924 African Americans referred to themselves as colored, which is evident from this poem by African American literary figure Jessie Redmon Fauset :
- "The Complex of color...every colored man feels it sooner or later. It gets in the way of his dreams, of his education, of his marriage, of the rearing of his children." --Jessie Redmon Fauset, There is Confusion (1924)
What draws my attention is her gross conduct. Charles Baudelaire's work has undergone serious re-evaluation. At the time of his writing he was considered by many to be merely a drug addict and a very vulgar author. Today, his importance as a literary figure, however, is rarely in dispute.
I hope the same re-evaluation will happen to the colored woman and the way she is presented. For after all, if she was worth to be mentioned in 1911 for her gross conduct, she should be worth to be mentioned for the role she did play in his conduct [Dec 2004]
