African Queen: The Real Life of the Hottentot Venus

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	• African Queen: The Real Life of the Hottentot Venus Rachel Holmes Random House, 2007 - 176 pages average customer review:based on 8 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

African Queen: The Real Life of the Hottentot Venus

I discovered this story thru an email regarding a U-Tube video. I was shocked that I never heard this story before. After reading this book it open my eyes to history that was lost and forgotten until recently. The author gave life and honor to Saartjie Baartman. This is a moving and thoughtful document on slavery and exploitation. Unfortunately the exploitation of women of color still exist today. For anyone who is a history buff this book is for you. I recommend it to anyone who is intrested in women's study.

Well done story of racist and sexist exploitation

The subject matter (the sad tale of Saartjie Baartman, a well-endowed African woman put on British and French freakshows as the "Venus Hottenot" whose gelueteus is exploited to the maximus) has been discussed by the other reviwers. Therefore, I would like to commend the author for her excellent use of primary sources in the telling of this story. We see shockingly crude cartoons mocking Saartjie's buttocks (often comparing her with Lord Glenville, a forgotten british statesman with a comparatively large derriere) and giving her a ridiculous pidgin English that she obviously didn't speak. We read from the handful of known interviews with her as welll as trial transcripts (as her exploiters are taken to court). This combined with Nelson Mandela's recent efforts to get her reburied with dignity in her native South Africa all make for a compelling story and good written history.

This book should be required reading for the modern rumpmistresses who thoughtlessly shake their gleuteus to the maximus on the likes of BET and MTV.

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Well written book on a very interesting topic

The casual reader might be put off by the slow start -- the author has to establish the historical base and lay out many details, BUT once into the story it quickly gets to the heart of the matter, exploitation, de facto or otherwise, of a black African female. Not a pretty topic, but when it's handled as it is here by a sympathetic writer it becomes a fascinating story and a memorial to the heroine, Saartjie Baartman.

Very interesting.

Gives yet another look into the dark chapters of the African Human Experience.

reviews: page 1, 2

Saartjie Baartman was twenty-one years old when she was taken from her native South Africa and shipped to London. Within weeks, the striking African beauty was the talk of the social season of 1810?hailed as ?the Hottentot Venus? for her exquisite physique and suggestive semi-nude dance. As her fame spread to Paris, Saartjie became a lightning rod for late Georgian and Napoleonic attitudes toward sex and race, exploitation and colonialism, prurience and science. In African Queen, Rachel Holmes recounts the luminous, heartbreaking story of one woman?s journey from slavery to stardom.

Born into a herding tribe known as the Eastern Cape Khoisan, Saartjie was barely out of her teens when she was orphaned and widowed by colonial war and forced aboard a ship bound for England. A pair of clever, unscrupulous showmen dressed her up in a body stocking with a suggestive fringe and put her on the London stage as a ?specimen? of African beauty and sexuality. The Hottentot Venus was an overnight sensation.

But celebrity brought unexpected consequences. Abolitionists initiated a lawsuit to win Saartjie?s freedom, a case that electrified the English public. In Paris, a team of scientists subjected her to a humiliating public inspection as they probed the mystery of her sexual allure. Stared at, stripped, pinched, painted, worshipped, and ridiculed, Saartjie came to symbolize the erotic obsession at the heart of colonialism. But beneath the costumes and the glare of publicity, this young Khoisan woman was a person who had been torn from her own culture and sacrificed to the whims of fashionable Europe.

Nearly two centuries after her death, Saartjie made headlines once again when Nelson Mandela launched a campaign to have her remains returned to the land of her birth. In this brilliant, vividly written book, Rachel Holmes traces the full arc of Saartjie?s extraordinary story?a story of race, eros, oppression, and fame that resonates powerfully today.

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