From Harlem to Paris: Black American Writers in France, 1840-1980University of Illinois Press, 1991 - 358 pages This academic study uses accounts from more than 60 African American writers--Countee Cullen, James Baldwin, Chester Himes et al.--to explain why they were more readily accepted socially in Paris than in America. Fabre (The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright) shows that French/black American affinity started in pre-Civil War New Orleans (and not, as the title suggests, in Harlem), when illegitimate mulattos with inheritances from French slave-owners sent their children to Paris to be educated. The book concludes that acceptance and appreciation of black Americans were based largely of French distaste both for white Americans, whom the French found egotistical, and for black Africans, with whom the French had a bitter "mutual colonial history." |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 78
Page vii
... James Baldwin in Paris : Love and Self - Discovery 195 14 Chester Himes's Ambivalent Triumph 215 15 William Gardner Smith : An Eternal Foreigner 238 16 Literary Coming of Age in Paris 257 17 A New Mood : Black Power in Paris 269 18 ...
... James Baldwin in Paris : Love and Self - Discovery 195 14 Chester Himes's Ambivalent Triumph 215 15 William Gardner Smith : An Eternal Foreigner 238 16 Literary Coming of Age in Paris 257 17 A New Mood : Black Power in Paris 269 18 ...
Page ix
... James Weldon Johnson collection at Yale University , I was able to go through the correspondence and unpublished manu- scripts of most of the Harlem Renaissance writers and their white friends . At the Schomburg Collection of the New ...
... James Weldon Johnson collection at Yale University , I was able to go through the correspondence and unpublished manu- scripts of most of the Harlem Renaissance writers and their white friends . At the Schomburg Collection of the New ...
Page x
... James Bald- win's fiction ; Michèle Ségarame listed French reviewers ' reactions to Roots , Jubilee , and Sally Hemings . Later , with the help of Jean - Pierre Turbergue , I prepared and sent to French university students and to noted ...
... James Bald- win's fiction ; Michèle Ségarame listed French reviewers ' reactions to Roots , Jubilee , and Sally Hemings . Later , with the help of Jean - Pierre Turbergue , I prepared and sent to French university students and to noted ...
Page xi
... James Emanuel , Melvin Dixon , and Ted Joans , made remarks upon , and corrections to , the passages concerning them . Among the scores of people to whom I am indebted , I wish to thank particularly the following writers , scholars ...
... James Emanuel , Melvin Dixon , and Ted Joans , made remarks upon , and corrections to , the passages concerning them . Among the scores of people to whom I am indebted , I wish to thank particularly the following writers , scholars ...
Page 5
... James Baldwin left for Paris shortly after Wright . As yet unknown in 1948 , he encountered great financial difficulties . Wright's death and the civil rights movement later gave him a turn at the role of the committed black writer ...
... James Baldwin left for Paris shortly after Wright . As yet unknown in 1948 , he encountered great financial difficulties . Wright's death and the civil rights movement later gave him a turn at the role of the committed black writer ...
Contents
The New Orleans Connection | 9 |
Early Visitors Preachers and Abolitionists | 22 |
After Emancipation The Talented Tenth in Paris | 31 |
W E B Du Bois and World War I | 46 |
Langston Hughes and Alain Locke Jazz in Montmartre and African Art | 63 |
Countee Cullen The Greatest Francophile | 76 |
Claude McKay and the Two Faces of France | 92 |
Jessie Fauset and Gwendolyn Bennett | 114 |
Chester Himess Ambivalent Triumph | 215 |
William Gardner Smith An Eternal Foreigner | 238 |
Literary Coming of Age in Paris | 257 |
A New Mood Black Power in Paris | 269 |
Visitors All or Nearly | 285 |
William Melvin Kelley and Melvin Dixon Change of Territory | 298 |
Ted Joans The Surrealist Griot | 308 |
James Emanuel A Poet in Exile | 324 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
acquaintances African Afro-American Alain Locke Algerian Ameri American Negro artists attended autobiography Banjo beautiful become black American black American writers Bois Boulevard café Césaire Chester Himes civil Claude McKay colonial colored Countee Cullen culture Dixon enjoyed Europe European exile expatriates Fauset feel felt France French French-speaking friends girl Harlem hereafter cited Hotel inspired intellectual James Baldwin jazz Jean July Langston Hughes later Latin Quarter Léopold Senghor literary live magazine Maran Marseilles McKay's Melvin musicians negritude never Noir novel novelist painter Paris Parisian play poems poet poetry political Press published race racial racism Richard Wright Riviera Séjour Senghor Smith soldiers stay story streets summer surrealist Ted Joans tion took Toomer tourists translated trip United University visitors W. E. B. Du Bois wanted white American William William Gardner Smith wrote Yale York