Bricktop's Paris
African American Women in Paris Between the Two World Wars
Albany : State University of New York Press, [2015]
Format: Book
Description: xv, 377 pages : illustrations, color map ; 24 cm
2015 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title
Longlisted for the 2015 American Library in Paris Book Award
During the Jazz Age, France became a place where an African American woman could realize personal freedom and creativity, in narrative or in performance, in clay or on canvas, in life and in love. These women were participants in the life of the American expatriate colony, which included F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Cole Porter, and they commingled with bohemian avant-garde writers and artists like Picasso, Breton, Colette, and Matisse. Bricktop's Paris introduces the reader to twenty-five of these women and the city they encountered. Following this nonfiction account, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting provides a fictionalized autobiography of Ada "Bricktop" Smith, which brings the players from the world of nonfiction into a Paris whose elegance masks a thriving underworld.
Longlisted for the 2015 American Library in Paris Book Award
During the Jazz Age, France became a place where an African American woman could realize personal freedom and creativity, in narrative or in performance, in clay or on canvas, in life and in love. These women were participants in the life of the American expatriate colony, which included F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Cole Porter, and they commingled with bohemian avant-garde writers and artists like Picasso, Breton, Colette, and Matisse. Bricktop's Paris introduces the reader to twenty-five of these women and the city they encountered. Following this nonfiction account, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting provides a fictionalized autobiography of Ada "Bricktop" Smith, which brings the players from the world of nonfiction into a Paris whose elegance masks a thriving underworld.
Contents:
The other Americans, 1919-1939 -- Les Dames, grand and small, of Monmartre : the Paris of Bricktop -- The Gotham-Montparnasse exchange -- Women of the Petit Boulevard : the artist's haven -- Black Paris : cultural politics and prose -- "Homeward tug at a poet's heart" : the return -- Gained in translation? / Alice Randall -- History's marginalia, autofictional mysteris, and a fondness for matters French / T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting -- The autobiography of Ada "Bricktop" Smith, or Miss Baker regrets / Ada "Bricktop" Smith and T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting.
Subjects:
Bricktop, 1894-1984.
African American women -- France -- Paris -- History -- 20th century.
African American women -- France -- Paris -- Biography.
Women entertainers -- France -- Paris -- Biography.
Nightclubs -- France -- History -- 20th century.
Americans -- France -- Paris -- History -- 20th century.
Paris (France) -- Intellectual life -- 20th century.
Paris (France) -- Social life and customs -- 20th century.
Montmartre (Paris, France) -- Biography.
Bricktop, 1894-1984.
African American women -- France -- Paris -- History -- 20th century.
African American women -- France -- Paris -- Biography.
Women entertainers -- France -- Paris -- Biography.
Nightclubs -- France -- History -- 20th century.
Americans -- France -- Paris -- History -- 20th century.
Paris (France) -- Intellectual life -- 20th century.
Paris (France) -- Social life and customs -- 20th century.
Montmartre (Paris, France) -- Biography.
ISBN:
9781438455013
Availability | |||
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Call Number | Location | Shelf Location | Status |
HISTORY Women Sha | Main (Downtown) | Third Level, Nonfiction | In |
Includes bibliographical references and index.