33. Performing a Life: Mattie Allen McAdoo's Odyssey from Ohio to South Africa, Australia and Beyond, 1890-1900

Paulette Young’s essay ‘Performing a Life: Mattie Allen McAdoo’s Odyssey from Ohio to South Africa, Australia and Beyond, 1890–1900’ on musician Mattie Allen McAdoo, explores the ways in which Mattie navigated her role as wife, performer, and African-American women during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Young examines her migration from a student and musical prodigy in Ohio and a teacher in Washington, D.C., to her travels as an international performer and her return to the US as a race woman. Her presentation of self through photographic portraits taken in South Africa, Tasmania and the United States is a central visual component of this effort.