In Eartha & Kitt: A Daughter's Love Story in Black and White, Kitt Shapiro, with Patricia Levy, has written both a loving biography of her mother, one of the best-known Black performers of the last century, and a memoir of their special bond.
Eartha Kitt, a self-described "poor cotton picker from the South" (even as she collected Tony, Oscar, Grammy and Emmy nominations--her "Santa Baby" still defines pop Christmas music), arrived in New York City in 1935 at age eight, rescued from an abusive South Carolina childhood. A diligent student "up North," she was performing professionally by 1950, establishing her "feline, sultry and exotic" style. She had Kitt in 1961, during a brief marriage to a white man. "I was really the first blood-related 'family' she had ever known," Kitt writes, and they were inseparable, "from the first day of my life to the very last day of hers."
Eartha, of African American and Cherokee heritage, delighted in defying stereotypes and called blue-eyed blonde Kitt her "walking United Nations." Kitt savored their world-wide travels for Eartha's bookings, as well as their home with gardens and animals in the California hills. Blacklisted after criticizing the war in Vietnam at a 1968 White House event, Eartha was a life-long activist: "She always did what she could to defend the underdog." Kitt notes that besides funding, "she devoted her time," including at Kittsville, a cultural arts program for inner-city youth, which continues today. Eartha Kitt traditionally closed her shows with the song, "Here's to Life," and her daughter's memoir is a generously documented tribute to the world-renowned performer who was, nonetheless, "a mother first." --Cheryl McKeon, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.