Product Description

It is Paris, 1815. An extraordinarily shaped South African girl known as the Hottentot Venus, dressed only in feathers and beads, swings from a crystal chandelier in the duchess of Berry’s ballroom. Below her, the audience shouts insults and pornographic obscenities. Among these spectators is Napoleon’s physician and the most famous naturalist in Europe, the Baron George Cuvier, whose encounter with her will inspire a theory of race that will change European science forever.

Evoking the grand tradition of such “monster” tales as Frankenstein and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Barbara Chase Riboud, prize-winning author of the classic Sally Hemings, again gives voice to an “invisible” of history. In this powerful saga, Sarah Baartman, for more than 200 years known only as the mysterious lady in the glass cage, comes vividly and unforgettably to life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #645654 in Books
• Published on: 2004-11-09
• Released on: 2004-11-09
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 8.00" h x .70" w x 5.15" l, .55 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In 1810, Sarah Baartman sailed willingly from her home in South Africa to England with her English husband, believing that fame awaited her as an African dancing queen. Well, she certainly found fame. Based on the true story of a woman who was exhibited as part of a freak show in London's Piccadilly and upon her death at age 27 was publicly dissected in France, this novel by poet, sculptor and novelist Chase-Riboud (Sally Hemings) conveys Sarah's victimization so well that the reader is still cringing after the last page is turned. Sarah herself copes with the harsh reality of her husband's betrayal-she's essentially been sold into slavery-through denial and gin. Her best chance to escape comes when abolitionist Robert Wedderburn intervenes by bringing her contract before a judge in an attempt to rescue her. Sarah, however, won't go along with it, because she doesn't want to return to Good Hope, where her Khoekhoe tribe struggles against colonization. Wedderburn captures the reader's frustration when he tells Sarah: "You are the unwitting collaborator of your own exploitation, agent of your own dehumanization!" Indeed, there are many tough scenes to endure, as Europeans endlessly ridicule her body and elongated genitals (mutilated as part of a tribal ritual) and examine her as a scientific curiosity. What makes the story, and Sarah's life, more bearable are the tender scenes with Alice, Sarah's English governess who stays with her and truly cares for her. Kudos to Chase-Riboud for exploring this story of oppression and for humanizing a woman who was virtually regarded as an animal, according to the ideology of the day.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
As she did in her best-selling Sally Hemings (1979), Chase-Riboud dramatizes a true story. This time, she goes back to the Dutch colonies of 1810 to recount the life of Sarah Baartman, a South African woman who was coerced into becoming an exotic dancer by two parasitic men. Having already lost her family in the Dutch and English massacres, Sarah faced certain death by staying in South Africa. Unfortunately, her journey toward a better life results in another kind of exploitation--this time on the freak show circuit in London. Forced into a cage in African garb, which allows the crowd of onlookers to intimately inspect her body, Sarah is put on public display as an example of a primitive oddity. Sadly, the dehumanization of Sarah did not stop with her death. In 1816, her dissected body was exhibited in a French Museum. In 2002, after a long legal battle, her remains were finally laid to rest in South Africa. Praise to Chase-Riboud for her total immersion in the spirit of Sarah Baartman. Elsa Gaztambide
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
“Sweeping, kaleidoscopic . . . A hauntingly compelling tale.” —Los Angeles Times

“Barbara Chase-Riboud should be praised for attempting such a difficult and important story. . . . She creates some horribly memorable scenes.” --The New York Times Book Review

“A bravura act of outrage and grace . . . written with shattering passion.” —The Boston Globe
“Disturbing and heartbreaking. . . . Illustrates how racial cruelty can be tightly wrapped in a shroud of scientific reason.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“A splendid epic of a young woman’s life that later became a country’s touchstone. . . . Rescues this human being from her ‘freakish’ place in history and gives her life the respect it deserves.” —The Times-Picayune

“[Hottentot Venus] conjures the pain of some of the most sensitive and hurtful relations between the powerful and the powerless whatever their color, whatever their gender. . . . In this chilling and mournful novel, Chase-Riboud brings back to life a woman whose existence as a symbol has obscured her essence.” –The Washington Post
   
“Ultimately Hottentot Venus is about resurrection. For through the novel, Barbara Chase-Riboud has restored Sarah Baartman’s life, her name, her voice, her humanity.” –The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Baartman’s brief, eventful saga is chronicled in harrowing factual and fictional detail in Chase-Riboud’s well-researched, unsparing book.” –Seattle Times
 
“Barbara Chase-Riboud, best known as the author of Sally Hemings tackles another hot-button historical incident in Hottentot Venus.” –Essence
  
“Barbara Chase-Riboud’s extraordinary novel recovers this riveting story of cultural voyeurism and physical cruelty with unblinking historical verisimilitude, ennobling pathos, and unerring narrative pace. This is an important book that lodges in the conscience like a nacre.” –David Levering-Lewis, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963

“Chase-Riboud plunges right into Baartman’s ambivalent heart and conjures up a character who is sharp, winning and true.” –The Plain Dealer
 
“Praise to Chase-Riboud for her total immersion in the spirit of Sarah Baartman.” –Booklist

“An extraordinary book by an extraordinary woman. . . . By virtue of beautiful pacing and writing, the novel is an exalting experience for the reader; and it rises to such heights at the end, that we experience a true epiphany. Like Beloved and Cry the Beloved Country, this book is essential.” –Carolyn Kizer, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Yin

“Chase-Riboud’s talent is the ability to write historical fiction that is meticulously detailed, descriptive and imagines the internal geography of those she writes about. . . . Persuasive, heartbreaking.” –Black Issues Book Review

“Expertly recreates Baartman’s spirit. . . . Chase-Riboud [is] a savvy documentarian and powerful storyteller.” –The San Diego Union Tribune

“A compelling story about racism and sexism and European imperialism, a story about the cruelty of curiosity that, in the end, should force many people to take a long hard look at themselves.” –Ebony