![]() ![]() The era Mathilda is most focused on was also the time of peak Black Modernism, and many of modernism’s (and post-modernism’s) concerns ripple through Lote. ![]() As she reincarnates, she looks at Beautiful people of the past, especially those of the late 19C and early 20C who were Bright Young Things – people of colour such as Richard Bruce Nugent and Josephine Baker, but also Stephen Tennant and Edith Sitwell – those who embraced Beauty and fabulous living, whose way of living was itself a form of extravagant poetry. What to do if you are Born to be Beautiful but all the world around you insists on Ugliness? How to escape the sartorial and existential drag of convention clogging your every brilliant pore? How to Escape? Is it possible to effect a succession of Escapes from others’ constrictions, and blithely jitterbug to another persona, another self-incarnation of Beauty? Become someone else? This is Lote protagonist, Mathilda’s way of crossing through life. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |