Always Wear Joy: My Mother Bold and Beautiful.by Susan Fales-Hill HarperCollins Publishers, April 2003 $24.95, ISBN ISBN abbr. International Standard Book Number ISBN International Standard Book Number ISBN n abbr (= International Standard Book Number) → ISBN m 0-060-52356-5 Always Wear Joy is Susan Fales-Hill's beautiful "valentine" to her adoring mother. As the daughter of Josephine Premice, a legendary black performer and actress, and of Timothy Fales, a white aristocrat, Fales-Hill had an upbringing that was certainly not ordinary. The 1958 marriage of her parents was quite the scandal. He was crossed off the Social Register, that infamous guide to America's oldest and best families; and the media, both black and white, had a field day. Josephine Mary Premice was a Brooklyn-born girl from a cultured and well-bred Haitian family wbo was raised to be a lady, not to be come a performer--a concept that horrified hor·ri·fy tr.v. hor·ri·fied, hor·ri·fy·ing, hor·ri·fies 1. To cause to feel horror. See Synonyms at dismay. 2. To cause unpleasant surprise to; shock. her conservative parents. Premice was a rebel who went on to study dance with the era's most important figures such as Martha Graham, Charles Weidman Charles Edward Weidman, Jr. (1901 in Lincoln, Nebraska-1975) was a modern dancer, choreographer and teacher. He studied and performed with Denishawn before leaving to form the Humphrey-Weidman school and company with Doris Humphrey and Pauline Lawrence. and Katherine Dunham. In the 1950s, she was dubbed a sensation when she started in the Broadway productions House of Flowers House of Flowers may refer to:
Evenings would sometimes find Fales-Hill on Broadway watching her mother perform, and summers were defined by idyllic stays at Faleton, the sprawling estate of her father's family. One day, Fales would be at an anti-Duvalier rally in front of the United Nations, the next day she would be taking lunch in her paternal grandfather's Upper East Side town house beneath gilded gild 1 tr.v. gild·ed or gilt , gild·ing, gilds 1. To cover with or as if with a thin layer of gold. 2. To give an often deceptively attractive or improved appearance to. 3. portraits of ancestors or try hag to play jump rope with girls near her Premice grandfather's Brooklyn brownstone brownstone, red to brown variety of sandstone. Its unusual color is caused in some instances by the presence of red iron oxide which acts as a cement, binding the sand grains together. : The Fales' Upper West Side apartment was a cultural salon composed of personalities like Maya Angelou, Roscoe Lee Brown, Hugh Masekela, Shirley Chisholm and Geoffrey Holder. In the mid-80s, Fales' father left his wife for a younger woman and moved to Paris. Premice began a long and valiant struggle with emphysema emphysema (ĕmfĭsē`mə), pathological or physiological enlargement or overdistention of the air sacs of the lungs. A major cause of pulmonary insufficiency in chronic cigarette smokers, emphysema is a progressive disease that commonly , which eventfully claimed her life. All throughout, we see Fales-Hill at her mother's side with a love so strong you can almost touch it. |
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