Queenie: Godmother of Harlem: A Graphic Novel

by Elizabeth Colomba, Aurelie Levy, Elizabeth Colomba (Illustrator)

Overview

An NAACP Image Award Nominee, Queenie: Godmother of Harlem is a historical graphic novel inspired by the life of legendary mobster Stephanie Saint-Clair, the infamous criminal who made herself a legend in the 1930s.

“It’s original, entertaining, riveting, moving. A beautiful piece of art, a must-read!” —Whoopi Goldberg

Born on a plantation in the French colony of Martinique, Stephanie Saint-Clair left the island in 1912 and headed for the United States, eager to make a new life for herself. In New York she found success, rising up through poverty and battling extreme racism to become the ruthless queen of Harlem’s mafia and a fierce defender of the Black community.

A racketeer and a bootlegger, Saint-Clair dedicated her wealth and compassion to the struggling masses of Harlem, giving loans and paying debts to those around her. But with Prohibition ending, and under threat by Italian mobsters seeking to take control of her operation, she launched a merciless war to save her territory and her skin. In an America still swollen by depression and segregation, Saint-Clair understood that her image was a tool she could use to establish her power and wield as a weapon against her opponents.

Authors Elizabeth Colomba and Aurelie Levy’s meticulous details—in both story and art—bring Saint-Clair’s story to life in a tense narrative, against a sometimes bloody backdrop of jazz and voodoo. The story tackles the themes of colonization, corruption, police violence, and racial identity, but above all, Queenie celebrates the genius of a woman forgotten by history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781419757747
Publisher:	Abrams ComicArts - Megascope
Publication date:	01/17/2023
Pages:	160
Sales rank:	269,153
Product dimensions:	7.10(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Aurelie Levy is a screenwriter, novelist, and documentary filmmaker. Born and raised in France, she pursued her higher education in Japan at the prestigious ICU in Tokyo where she studied history. She then extended her film and history studies at UCLA where she met Elizabeth Colomba. She then went on to write and direct six feature length documentaries. For the past 20 years she has traveled around the globe unveiling relevant stories and addressing current issues. Among the subjects she tackled are: celebrity culture, international adoption, and men in the #metoo era. Recently she has explored the hurdles of overlooked historical figures such as Stephanie Saint-Clair, the heroine of Levy and Elizabeth Colomba's debut graphic novel Queenie: Godmother of Harlem. Levy currently writes screenplays and TV series for French and US productions and hosts a podcast on writing with the largest literary media company in France. Other books by the author include the novel And the Oscar Goes To (2012) and The 21st Man (2021).

Editorial Reviews

★ 12/19/2022

Artist Colomba and documentary filmmaker Lévy team up for a rollicking retelling of the incredible life of Stephanie St. Clair, a Depression-era Harlem racketeer who outmaneuvered such mobsters as Dutch Schultz and Lucky Luciano while frustrating the police at every turn. With her enforcer “Bumpy” Johnson at her side, Queenie applies her genius for math to running numbers and uses her wealth to fight for civil rights and against police corruption. “Hope comes at a loan shark’s rate,” though, she warns. As she grows more powerful, she becomes a target for both law enforcement and underworld rivals. Colomba’s clean, crisp art brings the era to life, displaying impeccable research on historical details in clothing and jewelry while plunging the characters into lavish period settings: sophisticated Harlem parties, shows at the Cotton Club, neighborhood shops selling everything from dry goods to voodoo supplies, and flashbacks to Queenie’s childhood in Martinique. Levy peppers the fast-paced story with snappy dialogue (“I was so poor, I couldn’t jump over a nickel to save a dime”), diagrams explaining the logistics of organized crime, and quotations from the philosophy and poetry of the Harlem Renaissance. This smart, sure-footed biography belongs on every history aficionado’s shelf. Agent: Emilie Védis, Mediatoon. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

I’ve been an admirer of Elizabeth Colomba’s work for a while now. Her work is a vision of history and in particular herstory, which is often left out and left behind for being too clear, too beautiful, too interesting, too horrific . . . I’m excited to see she poured her talent into a new form of storytelling. Queenie: Godmother of Harlem is her new graphic novel where she brings back to life a powerful Black woman erased by history. It’s original, entertaining, riveting, moving. A beautiful piece of art, a must read!

Whoopi Goldberg

A dazzling, gripping, masterfully illustrated graphic novel that commands your attention from the first page! It’s a remarkable true story about a character who’s larger than life.” —Regina King

Regina King

I’ve been an admirer of Elizabeth Colomba’s work for a while now. Her work is a vision of history and in particular herstory, which is often left out and left behind for being too clear, too beautiful, too interesting, too horrific . . . I’m excited to see she poured her talent into a new form of storytelling. Queenie: Godmother of Harlem is her new graphic novel where she brings back to life a powerful Black woman erased by history. It’s original, entertaining, riveting, moving. A beautiful piece of art, a must read!” —Whoopi Goldberg—Whoopi Goldberg

“A dazzling, gripping, masterfully illustrated graphic novel that commands your attention from the first page! It’s a remarkable true story about a character who’s larger than life.” —Regina King

—Regina King

**STARRED REVIEW** "This smart, sure-footed biography belongs on every history aficionado’s shelf." —Publishers Weekly—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher