Sisseretta Blandish

In the social world of Harlem's strivers, Madame Blandish is a small entrepreneur of racial aspiration, selling transformations to women who want to look less like themselves. Her trade depends on the very color line that Black-No-More threatens to dissolve, and she is shrewd enough to see that the whitening craze is less a liberation than a new market. Her parlor becomes a front-row seat to the scramble of the Black bourgeoisie, catching every rumor and every defection before it reaches the newspapers.