A FANTABULOUS LIFE ABROAD!

The American Prohibition Era , one can say, enhanced the lives of many black Americans who might have otherwise been relegated to a life of banal existence accompanied by predicable racial repercussions.  This would definitely appliy  to one West Virginia born Mullato, named Ada Beatrice Queen Victoria Louise Virginia Smith.

Born into humble circumstances to a Black American mother and Irish father, in Alderson West Viginia, she discovered early on that she was a party girl.  She left home at 16 to work in Vaudeville, touring with The Theater Owners Booking Association…the TOBA…better known by the Negro performers of the time as the ‘Tough On Black Asses” agency.

She became known as “Bricktop” beause of her bright red hair, inherited from her father (“I’m a hundred percent Negro with a trigger Irish temper”, she often said).  When she landed in Chicago during one of her tours, she found herself drawn to its bawdy raucous saloon life.

Somehow, through extraordinary twists of fate, this ordinary everyday sistah from ‘round the way, who enjoyed dancing the Charlston and knocking back Remy Martins, found herself the “Toast of Paris”…no pun intended.., as soon as she arrived in 1924.

Among the rabble….rousing, expat high society of Paris in the Roaring 20s she found a backer who helped her 

open her own Nightclub called Chez Bricktop.  There she partied with zillions of the legends of the Lost Generation including  Mabel Mercer, King Farouk, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cole Porter, and others "down to the big boy himself”, the Prince of Wales, teaching everyone to dance the Black Bottom and the Charleston.

I mean…these were giddy times, as you can imagine.

Anyway, World War II arrived and she returned to the US until it was over.  She returned to Europe, opening a new Bricktops in Paris, until mobsters chased her straight to Rome.  Rome is where she opened another Bricktops where she welcomed and then introduced the old time “high end” customers to the newly minted Hollywood glitterati.  Fun times were had by all, until, again, she was chased by the Mob all the way to Mexico City, where she opened yet another Bricktops.

She has been called ”…one of the most legendary end enduring figures of the 20^th century American cultural history.”

Hummm….

Anyway, after all that partying and carousing “Miss Brickie” died peacefully in her sleep at the age of 89.

Ya gotta love her. Non?

A MIDLIFE CRISIS ON THE FRENCH RIVIERA

Ladyfingers: a novel by Delorys Welch-Tyson

Review of Ladyfingers: A Novel

“Black folks on the French Riviera?  Get outta here!  The French Riviera is a location for F. Scott Fitzgerald characters, not Terry McMillan people,” most would probably think.

 Well, let me tell you,  us American colored folks have been living down there on the coast as well as in Paris. 

That’s how I got here myself. 

Yours truly was inspired to explore the South of France by one of my favourite American authors, James Baldwin.  Not only did he live in Paris, but he spent most of his adult life until his death in Saint Paul de Vence, on the French Riviera.  Then there was black American  entertainer Bobby Short.  There were the jazz impresarios, George and Joyce Wein, the founders of the Nice Jazz Festival who had secondary residences in Vence. Let’s not forget the fact that Josephine Baker spent her last years with her Rainbow Tribe in Roquebrunne, on the French Riviera.  Among many others who I won’t name out of respect for their privacy, I will add Miss Tina Turner, the author of Ladyfingers, Delorys Welch-Tyson as well as yours truly.

The author Delorys Welch-Tyson has taken characters usually associated with F. Scott Fitzgerald and paralleled their lives with characters you might find in a Terry McMillan novel to create hilarious midlife crisis tales of American women living on the French Riviera.

Basically, the story is that a famous American filmmaker (no…it isn’t Spike Lee) is planning a wedding banquet at the Negresco Hotel on the French Riviera.  A ban of East Somarians plan to kidnap the American guests in order to demand ransom for their Anti-Sanction Society rebel organization.  The kidnapping plan is foiled due to the lack of strategic planning and general confusion which seemed to prevail during the post 9/11 Bush Administration.

Then there's the internationally famous Pop Diva (hints of Diana Ross, maybe?) in love with both a sadistic Belgian Mime and a manipulative record mogul.  But that a whole 'nother  parallel story!

This novel is written as humour and political satire

 Is the story plausible? Yes.  Absolutely, yes!

authro, Delorys Welch Tyson

 Believable?  No.

TWO FRIENDS AND A TALE OF TWO COUNTRIES: a book review

BLACKGAMMON by Heather Neff

“Understand this, Michael : There’s no such thing as a sanctuary. “

Believe me when I say that the pessimistic opening line of this intriguing novel belies the apparent optimism of the writer’s vision.  At least this is what I concluded after reading this story which chronicles friendship of two women from two different generations whose destinies were to work, live and try to love in Europe.

Michael…that’s right her name is Michael…lives in the academic environment of England, as professor of…predictably…African American literature with her husband a brilliant English scholar of ….you guessed it…African literature.

Cloe Emmnauel is a….. painter.  Well, at least she not a Naomi Campbell clone or an  aspiring chocolate Hemmingway squandering her days away playing with the green fairy in the squalor of bohemian Paris.  I’ll get to those books later.

Nevertheless, the two women met by chance in an American museum.  The older woman, planning to flee to Paris after  a disastrous romance with an Black-Canadian immigrant (yes, you read that correctly) and the other a quasi-orphan with dreams of living abroad, meet, become fast friends and  vowed to keep in touch.

They kept their vow throughout the novel through letters and occasional visits involving heart wrenching revelations..

Cloë the painter struggles with domestic violence issues from her past while trying to negotiate some equilibrium between her increasingly successful and demanding career and her challengingly peculiar love life.  The cultural and ethnic dynamics of her personal relationships with the men in her life will  definitely baffle any female reader who has lived abroad for any length of time, yet despite the implausibility of her mates you will probably gladly follow the story to its conclusion because of the vivid images of the cosmopolitan lifestyle of these two friends.

Black American women living abroad will obviously react  to the relationship configurations of these two women with a certain degree of scepticism.  More than a touch of mendacity and hints of multi-cultural treason prevail in this tragic-comic novel of the search for identity, love and, professional success.

The problem I find with novels written about American women abroad is that there is a stereotypical quality to the life choices of these women.  It places limits on the perceptions of the black American experience abroad, which limits the kind of novels we can expect  to be disseminated through the mainstream publishing industry.

Despite what probably feels like a negative review of Blackgammon, I actually thoroughly enjoyed it on many levels.

author, Heather Neff

Next I will review, Andrea Lee’s LOST HEARTS IN ITALY

KIDNAPPED AND IN HOLLAND: a book review

LENOIR by Ken Greenhall

"THEY ARE DERANGED.

They are pale, their country is flat and wet, and they have no souls.  I believe they are being punished for having only one God."

This powerful opening paragraph hooked me until the very end.

Have you ever visited a museum and noticed the rare face of  a Black person amid the colors and nuances of a European culture?  When you stopped to reflect, did you ever think to push yourself into the time and place of the painting while wondering what life was like for the exotic individual who inspired it?

Dutch painter, Peter Paul Rubens painting, Four Heads of A Negro was the inspiration for author Ken Greenhall's  extraordinary novel, LENOIR.

Lenoir, a kidnapped African during the European slave trade, is sold to a Dutch hustler during the height of  the Renaissance in 17th century Amsterdam.

The regal and arrogant Lenoir, finds himself both intrigued and repulsed by the Dutch society in which he finds himself.  In his  complex status as a slave he finds his duties to include that of companion, business partner, advisor, clandestine lover, to a man who introducess him to the upper levels of  society and the great salons of  the artistic community.

Working as a artists' model and painter's assistant  for personages such as Rembrandt and Rubens, and eventually as an actor for the traveling Italian Commedia de Arte theatre troup allows Lenoir to become a keen social observer and participant in the strange customs of what he considered a souless,  primitive and morally conflicted people.

Lenoir is an astonishing ahcievement and a well crafted novel, by a contemporary author who obviously had spent a great many years as an outsider in Europe's Low Country.

Next review: Blackgammon by Heather Neff