Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light [Hardcover]

Significant numbers of black Americans went to France for the first time in World War I as part of the U.S. armed forces and discovered a country where they were free of the strictures of racism. This comprehensive look at black Americans' historical affection for Paris in the 20th century covers literary figures like Richard Wright, entertainers like Josephine Baker and jazz musicians like Sidney Bechet and Kenny Clarke, as well as black academics, scientists and businessmen who found new lives in Paris. This is an important, and welcome book.

Stovall's revelatory chronicle reclaims an important yet neglected chapter of cultural history, delineating a cohesive community of black American expatriate writers, artists, musicians and intellectuals in Paris from 1914 to the present. During WWI African American soldiers, targets of discrimination on the front and back home, were welcomed cordially by ordinary French citizens. Attracted by the myth of a color-blind France, Harlem Renaissance writers Langston Hughes, Claude McKay and Countee Cullen flocked to Paris; Josephine Baker conquered the stage with her sensational performances; jazz musicians Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Bill Coleman lived in and drew inspiration from the City of Light. In the 1930s African American expatriate writers and artists in Paris helped launch the Negritude movement. Postwar Paris became a magnet to writers like Richard Wright, James Baldwin and detective novelist Chester Himes, who saw themselves as political exiles from a racist U.S. They fit into a vibrant Left Bank community that maintained close ties with Camus, Cocteau, Sartre, de Beauvoir. The 1960s and '70s saw an influx of African American emigre scientists, photographers, restaurant owners, taxi drivers, diversifying the community that today faces the rise of overt French racism. Stovall, a history professor at UC Santa Cruz, begins with an account of his own transformative experience as an African American in Paris in the early 1980s. His engrossing survey makes a compelling case that these expatriates pioneered a new type of cosmopolitan black community, one that celebrated black identity and helped them achieve a level of success denied to them back home, while they explored different modes of African-based culture from around the world. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Appleby's (coeditor, Being Right, Indiana Univ., 1995) collection of essays, produced under the sponsorship of the Fundamentalist Project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, focuses on religious orthodox movements in the Middle East. Some of the selections from scholars exploring well-known and less-popular Islamic movements include Daniel Brumberg's "Khomeini's Legacy: Islamic Rule and Islamic Social Justice" and Ziad Abu-Amr's "Shaykh Ahmad Yasin and the Origins of Hamas." Gideon Aran's "The Father, the Son, and the Holy Land" covers the Jewish component of Gush Emunim (the Bloc of the Faithful), while Samuel C. Heilman's "Guides of the Faithful" discusses the current extreme right wing and the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin. Yaakov Ariel rounds out the Christian element with "A Christian Fundamentalist Vision of the Middle East." A major conclusion is that religious fundamentalism has become an increasingly important geopolitical factor. This is a fine contribution to the comparative study of religion and necessary to understanding the relationship of religion to politics in the region.-Sanford R. Silverburg, Catawba Coll., Salisbury, N.C. Stovall, Tyler. Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light. Houghton. Dec. 1996. c.347p. photogs. bibliog. index. LC 96-24566. ISBN 0-395-68399-8. $24.95. In this significant social and cultural ory, Stovall (The Rise of the Paris Red Belt, Univ. of California, 1990) takes on jazz, literature, and interracial relations in Montmartre and Montparnasse from 1918 to the present. Highlighting a detailed and balanced account of African Americans in Paris are the triumphs and tenacity of Josephine Baker; the careers and failed friendship of Richard Wright and James Baldwin; and the lives of Sidney Bechet and other jazz greats. Such personal accounts stand out from a more general story of how African Americans found respect, affection, and equality accorded to them by French people, who often preferred them to white Americans or African blacks. Stovall explores in this context French tastes for exoticism and interracial relationships. Stovall's work is substantive enough for scholars and vivid enough for the general reader. An essential purchase for libraries.
--R. James Tobin, Univ. of Wisconsin Lib., Milwaukee
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Stovall paints for readers a masterful picture of life for blacks in Paris, quite naturally contrasting it with life for blacks in the U.S. He follows a strict chronology, beginning with African American soldiers in Paris during World War I, who were subjected to, as is well documented, rabid racism in Uncle Sam's armed forces, to African Americans in Paris today. Each chapter contains the historical and social issues that blacks faced during that time. In addition, Stovall has included interviews and discussions with persons familiar with those time periods. He contends in many ways and in every chapter that although there is racism in the City of Light, the experiences of those who have made the decision to remain proves that it is not nearly as demoralizing as in the U.S. Black American writers, painters, musicians, and political exiles have chosen to live in Paris not just for art and culture but because it has offered a relatively color-blind society. Lillian Lewis

An engaging chronicle of African-American life in Paris since the dawn of the Jazz Age. Josephine Baker, Sidney Bechet, Richard Wright, James Baldwin: Stovall (History/Univ. of Calif., Santa Cruz) tells his story primarily through mini-biographies of such figures and their confederates. He opens by contrasting painter Henry Ossawa Tanner, who had thrived in France for decades, isolated from fellow African-Americans, with the black soldiers who found Paris a revelation when they came over during WW I. Stovall describes how the freedom and respect afforded them in France inspired veterans and other African-Americans to emigrate. The French jazz craze attracted many musicians and entertainers, among them Baker, Bricktop (Ada Louise Smith), and Bechet. Stovall recounts the important Parisian sojurns of Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and other Harlem Renaissance literary figures and painters. The Second World War forced African-Americans to flee but brought in its wake the cosmopolitan Paris of the 1950s, where Wright, Baldwin, Chester Himes, and many other American blacks thrived while African- American politics cross-pollinated with postcolonial movements. The civil rights movement in America, and France's bloody colonial war in Algeria, changed the equation for black expatriates, making the Parisian sojurn less attractive. Baker's death in 1975 marked the end of an era. But the Parisian African-American colony has persisted, encompassing latter-day radicals like Eldridge Cleaver as well as professionals quietly making a living abroad. Stovall is at his best when synthesizing the stories of the expatriates to demonstrate that, despite their individual achievements, ``their most significant accomplishment was a collective one, the recreation of black American culture abroad.'' Stovall's main fault is that he is too modest: His adroit, responsible handling of this saga licenses him to state more forcefully his conclusion that this ``flowering of black life free from the constraints of racism . . . has much to teach us in the United States.'' (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

"Reclaims an important yet neglected chapter of Cultural History." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

A portrait of the avant-garde and close-knit community of African-American writers, painters, musicians, and political exiles who lived in Paris between the two World Wars, where they found art, culture, and freedom from racism.