Barbara Christian teaches black literature, concentrating on black women writers, in the Department of Afro-American Studies. A former department chairperson (and the first black woman to receive tenure at UC Berkeley), she is the author of Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition, 1892-1976. She was raised in the Virgin Islands and educated at Columbia University in New York.
Illusions
“The time is 1942, and the place is National Studios, a fictitious Hollywood motion picture studio. The elegant, stylized photography of Illusions sets the stage for the story of Mignon Dupree, an executive at National with the ambition of becoming a film producer. Mignon, like many working women, has gained a better position due to the wartime draft. She is a black woman who is proud of her heritage, but is taken for white by her co-workers simply because she is light-colored. Mignon is compelled to reveal her identity when she encounters Ester Jeeter, a black woman brought in to sing the dubbed track for a white movie star. Ester is shrouded in the dark folds of the recording booth like a musical instrument, while the white star is an animated and glamorous figure on the silver screen. In a metaphorical play on the myths of Hollywood movie-making, Mignon is awakened to the inequity of color as they are drawn deeper into the fantasy of the motion picture.” Renee Tajima