A new graphic novel tells the overlooked story of Stephanie Saint Clair, a Black female mob boss and fashion figure who lived during the height of the Harlem Renaissance.
The protagonist, a young Afro-Caribbean immigrant named Stephanie Saint Clair, is on a bus traveling South from New York City to escape an abusive relationship — when the Ku Klux Klan stops the vehicle. After ordering Saint Clair and all other Black passengers off the bus, the Klan violently assaults them.
"It's a pivotal moment in her life," Colomba said."She could have been killed easily, and I'm sure they left her for dead. ... And so it's almost like the Phoenix, it's almost a miracle. There's something so powerful to transcend that."charts Stephanie Saint Clair's rise from a traumatic and impoverished childhood to glamorous New York mob boss, fashion icon and defender of the Black community.
Though Colomba and Lévy included many real figures — including Saint Clair's protégé Ellsworth"Bumpy" Johnson and rival mobsters Dutch Schultz and Lucky Luciano — others are fictional and intended to chip away at different layers of Saint Clair's experience and frame of mind. For example, Lévy and Colomba invented a white Jewish male character named Rosenfeld, who acts as a father-figure to Saint Clair and fronts her business.
Characters like Rosenfeld — a confidante and father-figure to Saint Clair who also fronts her business because he is white — reveal the racial dynamics that Saint Clair likely had to navigate as a Black woman."We felt a huge responsibility," Lévy said, reflecting on the writing process."[Her story is] very dense historically. And then we had to find out as much as we could about her and then invent the rest," she said.
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