The essential illustrated guide! This newly designed and updated edition of Donald Bogle's classic study and celebration of America's "dark divas" now takes readers up to the present. Originally published in 1980, "Brown Sugar" was also the basis for the four-hour, four-part, documentary that appeared on PBS as well as on German Education Television, all also written by Bogle. Lavishly illustrated, "Brown Sugar" is a pioneering book - for example, in Bogle's application of the operatic term "diva" to pop goddesses. The first edition traced America's black female superstars from the beginning of the 20th century to 1980. This new edition will have three new chapters on the 1980s, the 1990s, and the first half of the present decade. "Brown Sugar" is not only about music stars. It is an unexcelled examination of the lives, careers, and sometimes-contradictory images (those public poses and private anxieties!) of African American goddesses of pop culture: the movies, television, music, and theatre. An interpretive history, "Brown Sugar" is not only about the accomplishments but also the sometimes heart-wrenching struggles and tragedies of highly talented and ambitious women who set out to announce themselves to the world - and while doing so, surmounted extraordinary obstacles, both professionally and personally.

Author Biography

Donald Bogle is the author of Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films, which is also published by Continuum selling 300,000 copies in four editions. Bogle is also the author of Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams, a group biography of Black Hollywood as well as the prize-winning biography Dorothy Dandridge and Primetime Blues.