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." |
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Page vii
... McKay and the Two Faces of France 8 Jessie Fauset and Gwendolyn Bennett 9 And Others Too 10 From the New Negro to Negritude : Encounters in the Latin Quarter 11 " Making It " in Postwar France 63 76 92 114 129 146 160 12 Richard Wright ...
... McKay and the Two Faces of France 8 Jessie Fauset and Gwendolyn Bennett 9 And Others Too 10 From the New Negro to Negritude : Encounters in the Latin Quarter 11 " Making It " in Postwar France 63 76 92 114 129 146 160 12 Richard Wright ...
Page ix
... McKay's Banjo and Baldwin's Giovanni's Room ( not to mention the latter's brilliant analyses of what it means to be an American , and a black American , in Paris in Notes of a Native Son and Nobody Knows My Name ) opened my eyes to the ...
... McKay's Banjo and Baldwin's Giovanni's Room ( not to mention the latter's brilliant analyses of what it means to be an American , and a black American , in Paris in Notes of a Native Son and Nobody Knows My Name ) opened my eyes to the ...
Page xi
... McKay and by Cynthia Kerman and Richard Eldridge ) , on McKay ( by Wayne Cooper ) , and on Hughes ( by Faith Berry and by Arnold Rampersad ) , this information was no longer so fresh and new . Consequently , with the competent and ...
... McKay and by Cynthia Kerman and Richard Eldridge ) , on McKay ( by Wayne Cooper ) , and on Hughes ( by Faith Berry and by Arnold Rampersad ) , this information was no longer so fresh and new . Consequently , with the competent and ...
Page 3
... McKay preferred to knock about on the road to Marseilles , Bordeaux , and Brest , and filled his novels with French scenes . In 1921 he left the United States for Russia and only went back in 1933 , via Morocco , after some eight years ...
... McKay preferred to knock about on the road to Marseilles , Bordeaux , and Brest , and filled his novels with French scenes . In 1921 he left the United States for Russia and only went back in 1933 , via Morocco , after some eight years ...
Page 4
... McKay , most of all — and the Caribbean and African students in the French universities during the years of the ... McKay's novel Banjo in turn influenced the French - speaking black writers . For the generation of Léopold Senghor and ...
... McKay , most of all — and the Caribbean and African students in the French universities during the years of the ... McKay's novel Banjo in turn influenced the French - speaking black writers . For the generation of Léopold Senghor and ...
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 |
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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