HIS 400 - S03 Sojourners: Mapping Black American Culture in Paris

Tells the fascinating story of African American women who traveled to France to seek freedom of expression.

"James Campbell, former editor of the New Edinburgh Review, provides a fresh look at Samuel Beckett's early career; reveals the facts behind the publication of the scandalous best-seller The Story of O and its anonymous author's real life; and tells the complete story of Richard Wright's years in exile. He captures the sense of deliverance that Wright, so accustomed to daily humiliations in his own country, experienced during his sojourn on the Left Bank, where, for the first time in his life, he was treated as a great man of letters. Here, too, are all the circumstances surrounding Wright's mysterious death, which many close to him regarded as suspicious. Exiled in Paris is a book that adds immeasurably to our understanding of a crucial period in the history and literature of the twentieth century."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Elisa Joy White investigates the contemporary African Diaspora communities in Dublin, New Orleans, and Paris and their role in the interrogation of modernity and social progress. Beginning with an examination of Dublin's emergent African immigrant community, White shows how the community's negotiation of racism, immigration status, and xenophobia exemplifies the ways in which idealist representations of global societies are contradicted by the prevalence of racial, ethnic, and cultural conflicts within them. Through the consideration of three contemporaneous events--the deportations of Nigerians from Dublin, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and the uprisings in the Paris suburbs--White reveals a shared quest for social progress in the face of stark retrogressive conditions.

The Jazz Age. The phrase conjures images of Louis Armstrong holding court at the Sunset Cafe in Chicago, Duke Ellington dazzling crowds at the Cotton Club in Harlem, and star singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey. But the Jazz Age was every bit as much of a Paris phenomenon as it was a Chicago and New York scene. In Paris Blues, Andy Fry provides an alternative history of African American music and musicians in France, one that looks beyond familiar personalities and well-rehearsed stories. He pinpoints key issues of race and nation in France's complicated jazz history from the 1920s through the 1950s. While he deals with many of the traditional icons--such as Josephine Baker, Django Reinhardt, and Sidney Bechet, among others--what he asks is how they came to be so iconic, and what their stories hide as well as what they preserve. Fry focuses throughout on early jazz and swing but includes its re-creation--reinvention--in the 1950s. Along the way, he pays tribute to forgotten traditions such as black musical theater, white show bands, and French wartime swing. Paris Blues provides a nuanced account of the French reception of African Americans and their music and contributes greatly to a growing literature on jazz, race, and nation in France.

"Paris Noir fills a grievous gap in the absorbing chronicle of American expatriates who chose to live in Paris in the twentieth century. For alongside Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein and Henry Miller was an avant-garde and tightly knit community of black American writers, artists, musicians, and political exiles who found in Paris the creative and personal freedom denied them back home." "A welcoming refuge for writers, Paris embraced Richard Wright, Chester Himes, James Baldwin, Countee Cullen, and Claude McKay. A score of all-important jazz musicians lit up the city at night, from Miles Davis to Charlie Parker to Sidney Bechet, while Josephine Baker dazzled audiences with the Danse Sauvage in the Revue Negre. Leaving an equally important mark were the painters and artists who found inspiration in the Paris scene: Henry Ossawa Tanner, Lois Mailou Jones, Ed Clark, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Barbara Chase-Riboud." "Paris Noir brings this vibrant world to life, beginning with the doughboys who returned to Paris after World War I and moving on through the Jazz Age, the Depression, the years of the Harlem Renaissance, World War II, and the postwar boom."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Paris, one of the world's great cities, has a long and rich tradition of embracing people of diverse ethnic backgrounds. For over two centuries, African Americans have been among the racial and cultural mosaic that has thrived in Paris and helped to make the city a world-renowned centre of imagination and creativity. Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Ada 'Bricktop' Smith, Sidney Bechet, Victor Sejour, Josephine Baker, Henry O Tanner, and numerous other African Americans have lived, worked, and played in Paris, and while doing so contributed significantly to the city's legacy of achievement in art, literature, science, business, sport, social reform, political science, and numerous other fields. This book takes the reader on six walking tours through historic districts of Paris where the African-American presence has been prominent. The authors have assembled a vast amount of information about the lives and works of many of Paris's most prominent African Americans, and all who walk the city's neighbourhoods with 'Paris Reflections' in hand will become intimately familiar with the stage and exact locations upon which so much of the area's vibrant African-American history has played out. Each walk is accompanied by a clear and detailed map that will help the reader easily navigate the intricate streets and buildings of the City of Light. The book provides a pithy introduction to the African-American experience in Paris. A selection of original colour art by Christiann Anderson, and a listing of sources of additional information about the subject of the book, contribute additional dimensions to this handsome and graceful handbook.