HAYDEN, and JAY WRIGHT. In addition to the novel
excerpts, short stories, and commentary, Chant has
art sprinkled throughout, including black-and-
white photographs of sculpture by Richard Hunt
and paintings by Richard Yarde. Romare Bearden’s
collages, reproduced in full-color plates with an
introduction by Ralph Ellison, add to the unique-
ness of this anthology. Finally, four essays about
music and culture complete the editors’ documen-
tary and, indeed, celebration of African-American
culture and cultural contributions during the last
quarter of the 20th century.
Chant of Saints does not pretend to provide a
comprehensive or monolithic representation of
the black experience. Rather, it opens a dialogue
about which works should be in the canon while
attempting primarily to present works that, ac-
cording to the editors, are superior in multiple dis-
ciplines. In many ways Chant echoes ALAIN LOCKE’s
pioneering anthology on the HARLEM RENAISSANCE,
The NEW NEGRO. However, structurally, Chant goes
further, as its very title, taken from BLUES lyrics,
suggests.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Harper, Michael S., and Robert B. Stepto, eds. Chant
of Saints: A Gathering of Afro-American Literature,
Art, and Scholarship. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1979.
Kim Hai Pearson
Brian Jennings
Chase-Riboud, Barbara (1939– )
Barbara Chase-Riboud was born in 1939 in Phila-
delphia to Charles Edward and Vivian May West.
She showed promise at a young age, developing
skills in music, art, and writing; she took art classes
at both the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the
Fletcher Memorial Art School when she was seven
years old. She earned her bachelor of fine arts de-
gree at Temple University and her master of fine
arts at Yale University in 1960. After graduating,
she worked as a sculptor in Paris, where she won
a number of awards for her artwork, which fea-
tured silk, wool, textiles, and cast and polished
bronze. She also studied art in Rome on the John
Hay Whitney Fellowship. While living in Paris, she
met and married photo journalist Marc Edward
Riboud. They had two children, Alexis and David.
They divorced in 1981, and Chase-Riboud married
Sergio Tosi. Chase-Riboud is an expatriate, living
in France and Italy. She continues to write, garner-
ing critical and popular attention for her novels,
Sally Hemings and Echo of Lions.
Chase-Riboud has written poetry as well as
novels. Her poetry is collected in From Memphis
and Peking (1974) and Portrait of a Nude Woman as
Cleopatra (1987). Her novels include Sally Hemings
(1979), Valide: A Novel of the Harem (1988), Echo
of Lions (1989), Hottentot Venus (2003), and The
President’s Daughter (1995). She has also writ-
ten book reviews for the Washington Post. Tw o o f
Chase-Riboud’s novels have been the subjects of
copyright infringement litigation. Granville Bur-
gess, a playwright, infringed on Chase-Riboud’s
copyright to Sally Hemings, a historical novel
about Thomas Jefferson’s romantic relationship
with a slave named Sally Hemings. Later, the film
Amistad, by Steven Spielberg, appeared to relate
the same story as Chase-Riboud’s Echo of Lions;
however, Chase-Riboud did not pursue litigation
because she felt that no wrong was done.
Travel figures largely in Chase-Riboud’s poetic
work. In addition to exploring alienation, distance,
change, and discovery, several of her works reso-
nate with a celebration of erotic love, passion, and
sensuality. Figures of couples permeate her work,
appearing in her poems, novels, and sculptures. She
often joins opposing forces together, such as male/
female and black/white, because they are simulta-
neously “banal and impossible.” Her novel Sally
Hemings explores a number of contradictions and
problematic dynamics in the United States’s his-
tory of miscegenation. While developing a novel
that dramatizes a 38-year affair between Thomas
Jefferson and Sally Hemings, Chase-Riboud also
examines a relationship fraught with the inevi-
table tension stemming from Hemings’s multiple
roles as Jefferson’s lover, victim, and property
and mother of his children. Chase-Riboud’s Sally
Hemings drew a great deal of attention when it first
appeared, eclipsing the warm critical reception forChase-Riboud, Barbara 97