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Swing Time (novel)
''Swing Time'' is a novel by British writer Zadie Smith, released in November 2016. The story takes place in London, New York and West Africa, and focuses on two girls who can tap dance, alluding to Smith's childhood love of tap dancing. Plot Beginning in 2008, the novel tells the story of two mixed-race, black and white, girls who meet in 1982 in a tap class in London. The unnamed narrator, who has a white, working-class father, and a mother of Jamaican descent is immediately drawn to the precocious Tracey, who has a white mother and a black father in prison, as they have the same skin colour and are the only black children at their dance lessons. Despite the fact that the narrator's semi-intellectual mother looks down on Tracey, the two become best friends as they live in neighbouring estate flats. While the narrator's dance career is hampered by her flat feet, Tracey is something of a prodigy and goes on to win many awards. Tracey credits this in part to the fact that her fa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith FRSL (born Sadie; 25 October 1975) is an English novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Her debut novel, ''White Teeth'' (2000), immediately became a best-seller and won a number of awards. She has been a tenured professor in the Creative Writing faculty of New York University since September 2010. Biography Sadie Smith was born on 25 October 1975 in Willesden to a Jamaican mother, Yvonne Bailey, and an English father, Harvey Smith, who was 30 years his wife's senior. At the age of 14, she changed her name from Sadie to Zadie. Smith's mother grew up in Jamaica and emigrated to England in 1969. Smith's parents divorced when she was a teenager. She has a half-sister, a half-brother, and two younger brothers (one is the rapper and stand-up comedian Doc Brown, and the other is the rapper Luc Skyz). As a child, Smith was fond of tap dancing, and in her teenage years, she considered a career in musical theatre. While at university, Smith earned money as a jazz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ginger Rogers
Ginger Rogers (born Virginia Katherine McMath; July 16, 1911 – April 25, 1995) was an American actress, dancer and singer during the Classical Hollywood cinema, Golden Age of Hollywood. She won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her starring role in Kitty Foyle (film), ''Kitty Foyle'' (1940), and performed during the 1930s in RKO Pictures, RKO's musical films with Fred Astaire. Her career continued on stage, radio and television throughout much of the 20th century. Rogers was born in Independence, Missouri, and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, Kansas City. She and her family moved to Fort Worth, Texas, when she was nine years old. In 1925, she won a Charleston dance contest that helped her launch a successful vaudeville career. After that, she gained recognition as a Broadway theatre, Broadway actress for her stage debut in ''Girl Crazy''. This led to a contract with Paramount Pictures, which ended after five films. Rogers had her first successful film roles as a supporting ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large national audience. Daily broadsheet editions are printed for D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. The ''Post'' was founded in 1877. In its early years, it went through several owners and struggled both financially and editorially. Financier Eugene Meyer purchased it out of bankruptcy in 1933 and revived its health and reputation, work continued by his successors Katharine and Phil Graham (Meyer's daughter and son-in-law), who bought out several rival publications. The ''Post'' 1971 printing of the Pentagon Papers helped spur opposition to the Vietnam War. Subsequently, in the best-known episode in the newspaper's history, reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein led the American press's investigation into what became known as the Watergate scandal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ron Charles (critic)
Ron Charles (born 1962 in St. Louis, Missouri) is a book critic at ''The Washington Post''. His awards include the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award Nona Balakian Citation for book reviews, and 1st Place for A&E Coverage from the Society for Features Journalism in 2011. He was one of three jurors for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Charles grew up in Town and Country, Missouri, and graduated from Principia College and Washington University before getting a job as a teacher at John Burroughs School. After a student's parent offhandedly suggested he try making a living as a book reviewer, Charles sent his first book review to ''The Christian Science Monitor'', which eventually hired him. He spent seven years as the ''Monitor''s book review editor and staff critic. In 2005, he was hired by the ''Washington Post''. Sometime after August 2010, with his review of Jonathan Franzen's ''Freedom'', Charles began a series of video book reviews for ''Post'' called "The Totally H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of ''The Guardian'' in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of ''The Guardian'' free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for ''The Guardian'' the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. The editor-in-chief Katharine Viner succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. Since 2018, the paper's main news ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taiye Selasi
Taiye Selasi (born 2 November 1979) is a British-American writer and photographer. Of Nigerian and Ghanaian origin, she describes herself as a "local" of Accra, Berlin, New York and Rome. Early life and education Taiye Selasi was born in London, and raised in Brookline, Massachusetts, the elder of twin daughters of Dr. Lade Wosornu, of Ghanaian descent, a surgeon in Saudi Arabia and author of numerous volumes of poetry, and Dr. Juliette Tuakli, of Nigerian heritage, a paediatrician in Ghana known for her advocacy of children's rights, including sitting on the board of United Way. Selasi's parents separated when she was an infant. She met her biological father at the age of 12. Her given name means first twin in her mother's native Yoruba. She had changed her surname several times; she was born with her mother's surname, she then adopted her step-father's surname (Williams), at 12 she had her surname changed to her father's (Wosornu), later she decided to adopt the hyphenated ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
White Teeth
''White Teeth'' is a 2000 novel by the British author Zadie Smith. It focuses on the later lives of two wartime friends—the Bangladeshi Samad Iqbal and the Englishman Archie Jones—and their families in London. The novel centres on Britain's relationship with immigrants from the British Commonwealth. ''White Teeth'' won multiple honors, including the 2000 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, the 2000 Whitbread Book Award in category best first novel, the Guardian First Book Award, the Commonwealth Writers First Book Prize, and the Betty Trask Award. ''Time'' magazine included the novel in its list of the 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. In 2022, it was included on the "Big Jubilee Read" list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors, selected to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II. Summary On New Year's Day 1975, Archie Jones, a 47-year-old Englishman whose disturbed Italian wife has just walked out on him, is attempting to take his own l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sans Soleil
''Sans Soleil'' (; "Sunless") is a 1983 French documentary film directed by Chris Marker. It is a meditation on the nature of human memory, showing the inability to recall the context and nuances of memory, and how, as a result, the perception of personal and global histories is affected. The title ''Sans Soleil'' is from the song cycle '' Sunless'' by Modest Mussorgsky, a brief fragment of which features in the film. ''Sans Soleil'' is composed of stock footage, clips from Japanese movies and shows, excerpts from other films as well as documentary footage shot by Marker. In a 2014 '' Sight and Sound'' poll, film critics voted ''Sans Soleil'' the third best documentary film of all time. Description Expanding the documentary genre, this experimental essay-film is a composition of thoughts, images and scenes, mainly from Japan and Guinea-Bissau, "two extreme poles of survival". Some other scenes were filmed in Cape Verde, Iceland, Paris, and San Francisco. A female narrator reads ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chris Marker
Chris Marker (; 29 July 1921 – 29 July 2012) was a French writer, photographer, documentary film director, multimedia artist and Essay#Film, film essayist. His best known films are ''La Jetée'' (1962), ''A Grin Without a Cat'' (1977) and ''Sans Soleil'' (1983). Marker is usually associated with the Left Bank Cinema, Left Bank subset of the French New Wave that occurred in the late 1950s and 1960s, and included such other filmmakers as Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda and Jacques Demy. His friend and sometime collaborator Alain Resnais called him "the prototype of the twenty-first-century man."Wakeman, John. World Film Directors, Volume 2. The H. W. Wilson Company. 1988. 649–654. Film theorist Roy Armes has said of him: "Marker is unclassifiable because he is unique...The French Cinema has its dramatists and its poets, its technicians, and its autobiographers, but only has one true essayist: Chris Marker." Early life Marker was born Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve. He was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lady Elizabeth Murray
Lady Elizabeth Mary Finch-Hatton (née Lady Elizabeth Mary Murray; 18 May 1760 – 1 June 1825) was a British aristocrat and the subject of a notable painting, once thought to be by Johann Zoffany, now attributed to David Martin. Biography Early life Murray was born on 18 May 1760 in Warsaw, Poland-Lithuania. She was the daughter of David Murray, 2nd Earl of Mansfield, by his first marriage to Countess Henriette Friederike von Bünau. Her maternal grandfather was Count Heinrich von Bünau. Following her mother's death in 1766, she was brought up at Kenwood House by her father's uncle William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, and his wife, Elizabeth. They soon also took in their great-niece Dido Elizabeth Belle (1761-1804), the mixed-race Illegitimate daughter of Murray's nephew, Sir John Lindsay; he sent the young Dido to his uncle from the West Indies. Marriage She married George Finch-Hatton on 10 December 1785. They had three children: * Louisa Anne Hatton (d. 1 Marc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dido Elizabeth Belle
Dido Elizabeth Belle (June 1761 – July 1804) was a British heiress and a member of the Lindsay family of Evelix. She was born into slavery and illegitimate; her mother, Maria Belle, was an enslaved African woman in the British West Indies. Her father was Sir John Lindsay, a British career naval officer who was stationed there. Her father was knighted and promoted to admiral. Lindsay took Belle with him when he returned to England in 1765, entrusting her upbringing to his uncle William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, and his wife Elizabeth Murray, Countess of Mansfield. The Murrays educated Belle, bringing her up as a free gentlewoman at their Kenwood House, together with another great-niece, Lady Elizabeth Murray, whose mother had died. Lady Elizabeth and Belle were second cousins. Belle lived there for 30 years. In his will of 1793, Lord Mansfield provided an outright sum and an annuity to her, making her an heiress. Early life Dido Elizabeth Belle was born into slavery in 17 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kenwood House
Kenwood House (also known as the Iveagh Bequest) is a former stately home in Hampstead, London, on the northern boundary of Hampstead Heath. The house was originally constructed in the 17th century and served as a residence for the Earls of Mansfield during the 18th and 19th centuries. The house and part of the grounds were bought from the 6th Earl of Mansfield in 1925 by Edward Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh, and donated to the nation in 1927. The entire estate came under ownership of the London County Council and was open to the public by the end of the 1920s. It remains a popular local tourist attraction. Location The house is at the north edge of Hampstead Heath, to the south of Hampstead Lane (the B519). It is in the London Borough of Camden, just south of its boundary with the London Borough of Haringey. History Early history The original house on the property was presumed to have been built around 1616 by the King's Printer, John Bill, and was known as Caen Wood House. It ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
