Queen Bess: Daredevil Aviator

by Doris L. Rich, Mae Jemison (Afterword)

Here is the brief but intense life of Bessie Coleman, America's first African American woman aviator. Born in 1892 in Atlanta, Texas, she became known as “Queen Bess,” a barnstormer and flying-circus performer who defied the strictures of race, sex, and society in pursuit of a dream.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Aviation, African American

183 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 1993

Reviews

[Carrie Hannigan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise of this book is admirable: collecting the life history of Bessie Coleman to help dispel the inaccuracies of previous accounts. Overall, the writing is dry as it stitches together facts, newspaper clippings, and whatever family quotes could be found. Because of a lack of material, the author also includes information about society and its pressures at the time. The book is short and a quick read, but leaves the reader wanting more substantial content (though, the author explains that there just isn't much to go on). Bessie is an interesting character, even in this limited sketch of her. Readers learn that when discussing Amelia Earhart (the darling of flight), one should not forget about Bessie Coleman, who deserves credit for her own accomplishments in the field.

[Hilary Currie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I cannot believe it took an episode of Drunk History for me to learn about Queen Bess, especially since this arm of history is right up my alley. This book’s length matches the short but brilliant time the Earth was graced by her presence, but still serves as a enlightening introduction to the first Black female aviatrix. Mae Jemmison took her photo to space and also wrote the afterword included here, which is worth the read just to get to.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

The content of this was very interesting. I knew Bessie Coleman was an African American pilot who had her picture on a postage stamp, but I didn't know anything else. From this book I learned that she flew in the 1920's when airplanes were primarily for entertainment rather than transportation, that she learned to fly in France because no U.S. aviation schools would accept black students, and that she was asked to star in a movie but turned it down because she considered the script to be racist.
Also that she died in a plane crash while still in her thirties.

Unfortunately, I felt the writing to be flat so that I wasn't inspired to keep reading. I read this book in very short pieces. Despite its short length, it took me several days to complete.

[Violet · Rating 2 out of 5]

My first foray into biographies was not by choice. I read this for an H-E-B summer essay scholarship contest. It’s important to keep this in mind because I find when one is not exactly a willing reader, one doesn’t often give good reviews of the book. And I feel that this is precisely what has happened to me.

I didn’t necessarily enjoy this book. It was dry and boring despite its fast pace. Only about a 1/3rd of the novel was about Bessie, the author filling in the gaps with distracting background information about the era. Granted this was due to the fact that there wasn’t much on Bessie herself that was not a complete lie or an over-exaggeration, something the author made quite clear. Still I couldn’t help myself from sighing in impatience, just wanting the book to be over and done with.

Though there were a few times that I found myself muttering “wow” or “amazing” at the sheer magnitude of the hate towards African Americans at that time, or the countless setbacks Bessie encountered which she unrelentingly struggled through, or the constant overstatements that plagued the newspapers, or any other of the delicious little nuggets of information that stuck out like gold fragments in an otherwise grey and drab river of facts.

There is also something to say about the pioneering determination that Bessie Coleman possessed. She was the first African American, man or woman, to obtain an international pilot’s license. She tirelessly work towards opening her own flight school for African Americans, and spoke around the country trying to inspire anyone and everyone to fly regardless of race and gender. All she wanted was to show that not only she, but everyone of her race and gender, was capable of great and wondrous things. Unfortunately, luck was not on her side. She had to be born in an age where African Americans were often seen as subhuman and it was always a struggle to find help to make her dreams come true. And the truly sad thing was that by the time of her premature death, that dream of opening a flight school was still unattainable. However, she did inspire thousands and paved the way for other African Americans and women to follow their own dreams.

And that’s the slightly regrettable thing about this book: it didn’t completely give Bessie Coleman justice to her legacy. But I won’t solely blame this on the author. It’s partly my fault with my negative attitude towards reading this. But it’s mostly the fault of the information at hand. No doubt that author did their research, but it was clear that there just simply wasn’t enough true information to show the complete picture of Bessie. As I already said, papers and aviators in that day were prone to exaggerating, so the author did their best by trying to fill in the holes with sometimes shocking yet often distracting background information. And that’s the sad tale of this novel. Not only does it contain the story of a courageous yet frequently ill-recognized woman, it is done in an inescapably dry and diverting fashion.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

She was born in Texas 1892, in a poor farming county where school was only held a few months a year between harvest and planting. She was the first in her family to learn to read, and sought out books about black heroes when the annual library wagon came to town - books about Booker T. Washington, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Harriet Tubman. As a young woman, her brother returned from WWI bragging about achievements of Europeans. Even their women flew planes! Bessie was taken by the idea, and saw her chance to become something great. No American school would teach her to fly, so she learned French, raised funds to travel overseas, and became the first black and native American woman to earn a pilot's license.

In the years that followed, Bessie Coleman struggled with dangerous airplanes, overbearing managers, and financial hardships, but she never gave up on her dream to start a school for black pilots. She amazed crowds with both her stories and her acrobatic flying shows. Like too many early aviators, she did not live long enough to realize her dream or write her memoirs for us to learn more details of her life. This book paints a picture of the swirling times and places of Bessie's journeys, based on news and accounts from those closest to her. While the details can be contradictory, it's enough for us to gain a sense of how little Bessie Coleman started from, and how much she dreamed anyway.

[Matthew Bieniek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting story of a pioneering aviator, but after reading it, I still don't feel like I know much about Bessie Coleman as a person. The author admits right up front that when Coleman died, she left behind few written documents. Most of the letters she wrote have been lost, and newspapers of the time didn't cover her exploits well, if at all, because of her race and gender. The few people that knew her that were still alive as this book was written were getting up in years, so their recollections might not have been the sharpest, especially in the finer details of the story.
So what we have here is a fairly entertaining story of the first African-American woman to have a pilot's license, but we really don't know what made her tick. She repeatedly talked of buying planes and opening flying schools, neither of which happened and we don't really know why. At times the author makes her sound like an idealist with plans well beyond her means, who was possibly let down by people promising to fund her plans, and at other times she comes off sounding almost like a con-woman, making promises to the public that she could never keep. Unfortunately, there's no way to really know the truth.
I did enjoy the book. It's just a shame we'll never really know the full story.

[Sugarpuss O'Shea · Rating 2 out of 5]

As others have said before, Ms Rich had limited sources to draw upon when she wrote this book. The problem is, a person such as Bessie Coleman should jump off the page. Instead, the writing is so flat, we're left with a one dimensional picture of someone who must've been larger than life. Perhaps, someone out there will give Queen Bess the biography she deserves.




PS: In future editions, PLEASE move the photo section from the middle of the book to the end. The reason most people read biographies is to learn about new people. The photo insert gives away how the book ends before you're even halfway through it, hence the reason I knocked off a star.

[D'Arcy Pryciak · Rating 4 out of 5]

The remarkable story of the first African American female air pilot. Follows the bare facts from her birth to her repeated attempts at fame and the deep desire to open her own flight school. The vibrant woman traveled all over the states, battling segregation and charming many. This squeaky clean story avoids speculation about her possible wilder side, but allows for her self aggrandizing selective truths as she reached for the stars.

[Amber Page]

Poison-Take a Flying Leap-memoir or biography of a 'daredevil'-first black female aviator. Very interesting. Bessie didn't hesitate to embellish her resume to try and advance her goal of finally establishing a flying school for blacks. Died at age 33 when falling from a plane while trying to scout a landing site for when she did a parachute jump. A white man was her pilot and there was some speculation as to whether it was accident or murder. 4*

[Tom Ackerman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short and mostly engaging biography. I feel like the author does the best she can with the limited sources available.

[Carol Rengel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you author for writing this but five stars to Queen Bess. What a remarkable woman!

[Clarence Goodman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fairly simplistic, but at least someone wrote this story. She deserves more.