While I’m reading, a sentence will grab me and force me to stop. I pay tribute to other authors by sharing their Damn Fine Sentences with you. Then I recount a memory the words bring up for me. It’s about how books connect with your life.
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“… every favor came with enough strings attached to stage a puppet show.”
—Leigh Bardugo
--Six of Crows
Our fake fireplace aglow and fake fire-crackling sounds completing the illusion, we settled into our T.V. room to stream Carmen Jones. I looked forward to Harry Belafonte’s gravelly calypso singing voice, but when he opened his mouth, out came the sound of a white man. And Dorothy Dandridge, the lyrics came out a micro-second after her mouth shaped the words. The powers that be had dubbed in white voices for these two internationally acclaimed black singers.
How did director Otto Preminger present the deal to Dandridge and Belafonte? I’ll make you two colored singers into stars! But—you won’t sing. Your voices will be silenced, replaced by white ones. One more thing, the white voices will sing the way Oscar Hammerstein II thinks you people talk. “Dere’s a café on de corner.”
###
“… every favor came with enough strings attached to stage a puppet show.”
—Leigh Bardugo
--Six of Crows
Our fake fireplace aglow and fake fire-crackling sounds completing the illusion, we settled into our T.V. room to stream Carmen Jones. I looked forward to Harry Belafonte’s gravelly calypso singing voice, but when he opened his mouth, out came the sound of a white man. And Dorothy Dandridge, the lyrics came out a micro-second after her mouth shaped the words. The powers that be had dubbed in white voices for these two internationally acclaimed black singers.
How did director Otto Preminger present the deal to Dandridge and Belafonte? I’ll make you two colored singers into stars! But—you won’t sing. Your voices will be silenced, replaced by white ones. One more thing, the white voices will sing the way Oscar Hammerstein II thinks you people talk. “Dere’s a café on de corner.”
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