Black Man on the Titanic: The Story of Joseph Laroche.

• Author: Brantley, Amber

Bile, Serge. Black Man on the Titanic: The Story of Joseph Laroche. Coral Gables, FL: Mango Publishing Group, 2019.

The last voyage of the Titanic is a story that nearly everyone has heard. The discourse surrounding the fascinating tale, however, emphasizes elite white passengers. In the 1997 blockbuster film Titanic, the story is centered on Jack and Rose, two fictional characters who come from different social classes and eventually fall in love after meeting on the ship. There was, however, a real-life love story on the Titanic that involved Joseph and Louise Laroche. In Black Man on the Titanic: The Story of Joseph Laroche, the reader is introduced to a Haitian man of color who traveled on the Titanic. In this ethnography, Serge Bile, a French-Ivoirian journalist, re-creates the story of Joseph Laroche with a plethora of primary sources. He explores topics such as race and class at a time when Black people were legally...