Foreign Tongues and Chocolate Tarts
mercredi 7 mars 2012
mardi 6 mars 2012
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 20th 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?
dimanche 26 février 2012
There Is No Excuse For This!
In a
Northern Italian city back in the early 80s I met a young black woman with two
young children. Actually I was
introduced to this young woman, by an Italian friend who thought I might like
meeting another black female in Europe.
My Italian
friend had very little previous exposure to black people except through
American movies and television. Little
did this friend know that the two black women about to meet would have less in
common than would an Italian and a French person.
The young
woman from Uganda told her story of escaping the nefarious dictator, Idi Amin’s,
violently
oppressive regime. She said that she was
part of a group of children on a class trip to Europe to visit art museums in
Rome.
They were
then released into Italy to fend for themselves. It was assumed that these youngsters would
have a better chance of surviving on the streets of Europe than in their native
African country.
She
survived. She learned Italian. She is a mother of two healthy children. She was at that time studying restoration in
Italy.
Now, this
brings me to the harrowing memoir, How to
Die in Paris, by Naturi Thomas. Thomas is American. A black, American female running from her
demons, quickly finding herseldf homeless on the streets of Paris.
There was
no Jim Crowe, American apartheid, KKK, or on the other hand any Idi Amins, Hitlers,
Francos or Stalins.
Only her
parents.
All I can
say about this book is that I am confounded to find that such a thing would
happen to an educated, bilingual citizen of the wealthiest country in the
world.
Perhaps, if
Americans would read this memoir, there will no longer be resistance to
Universal Health Care for it’s citizens.
By anyone.
Never!
I
understand that the author of this memoir eventually made it home to America,
but now lives in England.
Read this
book. Share it with everyone. Talk about it in your book groups.
dimanche 29 janvier 2012
Pressé Comme Un Citron
The 13th adopted child, Jean Claude Baker,
collaborated with author Chris Chase on the life of the most extraordinary gift
America has handed over to France.
His mom, by adoption, Freda Josephine
McDonald.
Generations all over the world, know
her as the legendary, East Saint Louis-born, Josephine Baker.
Renowned for her civil rights
activism and the creation of her Rainbow tribe by adopting war orphans from every place on earth and
creating a home and sanctuary for them in a castle in the Dordogne region of
Paris. She is remembered for her famous song “J’ai Deux Amours, Mon
Pays et Paris”
The irony of this, in my opinion, is
extraordinary considering the cumulative circumstances of her life journey.
She came into the world during the
area when the status quo of the United States for black Americans was that of
poverty, Jim Crow Laws (look it up, people) and ethnic torture targeted mainly
at it’s black citizens.
Somehow, despite this she developed
theatrical talents in the US to arrive in France in the late twenties in an all
black troupe of performers in a folkloric Negro review called La Revue
Nègre.
The word “nègre” in France has always
given me pause..but that’s a whole ‘nother story.
Her success catapulted her into
stellar heights of show business, politics and philanthropy.
First husband, and manager "Count" Abatino |
First home; Villa La Vesinet |
second husband, businessman, Jean Lion |
I have read a number of biography’s
of Madame Baker, but her son’s book, by
far, is the most informative and detailed account of the life of a woman who survived Prohibition,
racism, two World Wars, the Civil Rights war in America, the McCarthy ear,
wild personal and global economic
swings, the vicissitudes of stardom, living and loving in a foreign country,
and the fickle nature of international relations.
going to war |
Madame Baker wins war |
War Hero: Receiving the medal of the Crox de Guerre |
Home and much, much more...Castle Les Milandes |
Last husband and the Rainbow Tribe |
Single mother of teenagers |
debt, debt, debt and mo' problems |
astounding resilience!! |
Ernest Hemingway called her “the most sensational woman anybody ever saw, or ever will.”
After reading this absorbing
biography of this quintessential renaissance woman, I was left wondering
what became of all the family members of the Rainbow Tribe.
Mme. Baker and the author, Jean Claude Baker |
Perhaps someone out there would like to take on the project which
perhaps could be called…A Baker’s Dozen.
Wouldn’t that be chouette?
samedi 21 janvier 2012
THE MONTMARTRE BLUES
Rendez-vous
Eighteenth has been
considered “crime fiction.” I’m not sure I agree with this. I’m leaning more toward classifying, if you
must, Jake Lamar’s novels as “social commentary”.
You see, Ricky Jenks, the protagonist, has escaped psychotic girlfriends,
humiliation and betrayal in the United States to find a new life in Paris. He
has chosen the world of the 18th arrondissement among the whores,
pimps, transvestites, immigrants and tourists of the Pigalle and Montmartre, in
his bloodstained walk up apartment building.
He’s finally found peace of mind in his routine as an expat musician in
a crèperie in Montmartre, and the companionship of his ‘big haired’, ball
busting Muslim girlfriend, Fatimah, who will only marry a Muslim man.
Dramatically upsetting his uneventful but satisfying life of bohemian
freedom and independence is the arrival of his cousin Cash, a world- renowned
orthopaedic surgeon, and his ban of Eastern European mobster friends.
Cash has arrived to commission Ricky to try and find his wife, Serena
(aka Little Lonnie John) who has fled
the country to hide out in Paris after having attempted to murder him in their
luxurious home with a kitchen carving knife.
In the Eighteenth arrondisement, we meet the ex-singer and fried
chicken restaurant owner, Marva, the enigmatic members of the Million Man
Diners group, Detective La Mouche, le flic de Montmartre and a host of other
characters vying for parts in the most hysterical and fun expat novel I have
ever read.
author, Jake Lamar |
It’s sequel is entitled, The Ghosts of Saint Michel.
lundi 16 janvier 2012
A YOUNG BLACK BOY AND HITLER'S GERMANY
At the risk
of understating the content of this review, this is a bit of a diversion in
tone from the previous ones, but exceedingly noteworthy as an expat
novel/memoir.
This story is not written by a native born American who lived abroad. This is a reverse migration tale, in the context of Blog, of a black man, a refugee from Hitler's Europe, who eventually chose to become an American citizen.
I remember reading Hans Massaquoi's
editorials in Ebony Magazine as a little girl growing up in NYC.
He was then the managing
editor.
Ebony Magazine was the first magazine of
its kind to feature the lives and accomplishments of accomplished Negros…as we were
called at the time.
Ebony Magazine |
It was required reading in my home among
other similar publications and books which were my parents' supplement to the
limitations of their childrens’ standard Eurocentric education in school.
Ebony Magazine was founded by John Johnson
in 1945 and was dedicated to black American issues in a much needed positive
and self-affirming manner.
Publisher, John Johnson |
For many years, I assumed that Mr.
Massaquoi was a native- born American and because of his surname and appearance
a Creole from, perhaps, Louisiana.
That was until later years, when I ran
across this:
Hans Massaquoi as a young boy in Hamburg, Germany |
“I
was six years old when I started school on 1932. Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. I was too
young then to understand what this would mean for me. I didn’t know that my mother, a nurse, had
lost her government job because of me. The
teachers who had objections to the new regime were quickly replaced by younger
teachers who were openly pro-Nazi. Some
of them, including the head teacher were plainly hostile to me and did their
very best to insult me and to make disparaging remarks about my race. One time –
I must have been about ten – one of the teachers took me aside and said, ‘When
we’ve finished with the Jews, you’ll be next.’
The most important reason why I survived Hitler and was not killed
during the holocaust was that there wasn’t a large Black community in Germany.”
~Hans
Massaquoi, in the Anne Frank Journal, 1994
In 1933 around 5,000 Black people, mainly men and mainly from German
colonies in Africa, lived in Germany. Some were married to German women and had
children with them.
The Nazis, despite that fact that they found their black subjects
inferior and impure, were unsure of how to treat them. Since these blacks only
formed a small group who did not represent a threat to Germany they were
generally less targeted than the Jews of Germany.
Ironically, at the same time, the Nazis also wanted to show that Black
people were treated better than in Germany than in countries such
as the USA.
For a time young Black people were even allowed to join the Hitler Youth.
But eventually more than three thousand Black Germans were put into
concentration camps. However, most of them were not arrested because of their
skin colour, but because they were communists or Jehovah’s Witnesses, or
because they played the then forbidden jazz music.
Mr. Massaquoi, the son of a Liberian father and German mother writes of
his journey from Hitler’s Germany to his search for identity in Liberia, then
his ultimate immigration to the United States where he would become involved in
the American Civil Rights Movement.
He tells of life after the war where he
sought friendship with black American soldiers and of his eventual move
to the States in 1950 where he found that racism was as prevalent as it
had been under the Third Reich!
Hans Massaquoi |
Need I write more?
jeudi 12 janvier 2012
A BLACK GIRL CHASING AFTER BALDWIN
On the cover of Shay
Youngblood’s novel, Black Girl in Paris, is a black woman
with blue eyes, gazing into the void, it seems. She is smoking a
cigarette and her hair is infested with butterflies. Perhaps I’m
overstating the image, yet this curious cover just about sums up the cumulative
message of the story.
Eden is the adopted child of a childless older couple. They claim that they found her in a brown paper bag in the bathroom of a bus station. My guess is that parents tell their kids lots of things in order to keep them in line in order to minimize disciplinary issues. But then what do I know, perhaps I’m just projecting?
Anyway, in 1986 25-yearold Eden arrives in Paris with 200 bucks. I suppose she felt that, after all, Baldwin arrived with only 50 bucks and became famous, why not give it a shot.
Hmmm...
Eden is an aspiring writer searching for life experience, after spending time working in the tomb-like environment of a museum in Michigan. After encouragement from a black French Parisian couple she encountered at the museum where she worked, she decided to take the plunge… as it were.
With two hundred dollars it is obvious that her experience would be a Bohemian one. Black Girl in Paris is actually beautifully written travelogue and guide book in a fiction format. We follow the protagonist from her odd jobs as, au pair, poet’s helper and artists’ model. The ups and downs of life in Paris also leads Eden to indulge in pretty theft, lesbian love and an affair with an androgynous, white, American, male, expat, jazz musician named Ving.
Her search for Baldwin eventually leads her away form Paris to the warmer climes of the South of France, where she had been told that he lived at the time. She eventually heads back to the States after a brief sighting, finally, of Baldwin leaving a Paris café.
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