Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface by Anne Anlin Cheng (review)

Converged Aesthetics: Blewishness in the Work of Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell

“…Moreover, this is the second time in the film he is caged-he had been in the naval jail for a short spell for a minor infraction and, indeed, had freed the caged birds after sneaking out of the boat and swimming ashore to be reunited with his soi-disant sister. In Second Skin, Anne Anlin Cheng (Cheng 2011) asks us to consider what it would mean to see Baker as a "fracture in the representational history of the Black female body" (Cheng 2011, p. 3), and I see Russell's work as contributing to this fracture; this resistance, the shadow play as pressing against rather than re-affirming Baker's subjugation.…”