THE MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW
BETHANY’S BOOKSHELF

Adventures in Black and White
Volume 19, Number 7, July 2019

Synopsis: A memoir-travelogue first published in 1960, mixed-race American pianist, composer, journalist and author Philippa Schuler’s Adventures in Black and White is being reissued by 2Leaf Press with a critical introduction, including minor edits and annotations of the original text by scholar Tara Betts.

Recognized as a prodigy at an early age, Philippa Duke Schuyler was heralded as America’s first internationally-acclaimed mixed race celebrity. Her father, a conservative black journalist, and her mother, a white Texan heiress, dedicated Schuyler’s development to the cause of integration with the claim that racial mixing could produce a superior hybrid human, a claim that Schuyler resisted, but would nonetheless hurl her into a destructive identity crisis that consumed her throughout her life.

When the transition from child prodigy to concert pianist proved challenging in America, Schuyler, like many black performers before her, went abroad during the 1950s for larger audiences. Schuyler’s witnessing first-hand the dissemblage of European colonies in Africa and the Middle East is the focus of Adventures in Black and White.

Her narrative connects the Harlem Renaissance to the prelude of the Civil Rights Movement at a time when the public conversation on interracial identity in America was just beginning. As Schuyler writes about Africa (“the homeland of her ancestors”) her readers can begin to under-stand how the young musician would eventually find her way as an author and a journalist, and the books that followed.

Critique: An inherently interesting and impressively informative memoir and cultural history by the late Philippa Schuler (1931-1967), “Adventures in Black and White” is unreservedly recommended for personal reading lists and both community and academic library 20th Century American Biography collections and 20th Century African-American History supplemental studies lists.

ADVENTURES IN BLACK AND WHITE

Adventures in Black and White, a memoir-travelogue, was first published by world-renown child prodigy Philippa Duke Schuyler in 1960. In this first revised edition of Adventures in Black and White since its initial publication, scholar Tara Betts provides a critical introduction to this updated volume, including minor edits, and annotations of the original text. Recognized as a prodigy at an early age, Schuyler was heralded as America’s first internationally-acclaimed mixed race celebrity. Her father, a conservative African American journalist, and her mother, a white Texan heiress, dedicated Schuyler’s development to the cause of integration with the claim that racial mixing could produce a superior hybrid human, a claim that Schuyler resisted, but would nonetheless hurl her into a destructive identity crisis that consumed her throughout her life. When the transition from child prodigy to concert pianist proved challenging in America, like many black performers before her, she went abroad during the 1950s for larger audiences. Schuyler’s witnessing first-hand the dissemblage of European colonies in Africa and the Middle East, is the focus of Adventures in Black and White. Luckily, this narrative connects the twenty-first century to right after the Harlem Renaissance, and the prelude to the forthcoming Civil Rights Movement at a time when interracial identity was just becoming part of a public conversation in America. As Schuyler begins to write about Africa—”the homeland of her ancestors”—readers can begin to understand how the young musician would eventually find her way as an author and a journalist, and the books that followed.

MIXED RACE STUDIES: Steven F. Riley, May 30, 2018