concubines

On page 87, a bracket marks a passage recording that Henry II's wife Eleanor was "enraged against hir husband bicause he kept sundrie concubines," which Milton notes in the Commonplace Book: "Concubinatus ... turn'd both wife & children against our Hen. 2. Holinsh. p. 87."

When, for instance, Rashad writes about how white men select concubines, it sounds much like the colorism still used to marginalize Black women: “They created a rating system for behavior and appearance. Facial symmetry, waist-to-hip ratio, skin tone, curl pattern, blemishes …”

He now bore responsibility for a court whose roll of staff members and dependents listed more than 14,700 people, including about 3,000 bodyguards, 42 concubines and employees with specialties as specific as dusting chandeliers and grinding walnuts.

As the choreographer read about this eccentric ruler — a gifted athlete with extravagant appetites and wives, kids, concubines and Rolls-Royces galore, who died in his 40s — a production took shape in his mind.

Drawing together decades of writing, these stories follow concubines who fall in love, paranormal researchers and an older man forced to confront his past.