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 76
Page vii
... Wright : An Intellectual in Exile 175 13 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 ...
... Wright : An Intellectual in Exile 175 13 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 ...
Page ix
... Wright , the experiences and reactions of the expatriate Afro - American writers who stayed with Wright in Paris in the 1950s attracted my attention to the very special emotional relation- ship those writers enjoyed with France ...
... Wright , the experiences and reactions of the expatriate Afro - American writers who stayed with Wright in Paris in the 1950s attracted my attention to the very special emotional relation- ship those writers enjoyed with France ...
Page xii
... Wright , and Frank Yerby . I have benefited from the support of grants provided by the Ameri- can Philosophical Society ( 1972 ) , the North Atlantic Treaty Organi- zation ( 1973 ) , the Fulbright Commission and the French - American ...
... Wright , and Frank Yerby . I have benefited from the support of grants provided by the Ameri- can Philosophical Society ( 1972 ) , the North Atlantic Treaty Organi- zation ( 1973 ) , the Fulbright Commission and the French - American ...
Page 4
... Wright thought when , after liberation , Franco - American contacts started up with re- newed vigor during what Claude - Edmonde Magny has called “ the age of the American novel . ” Richard Wright was at the forefront of this , along ...
... Wright thought when , after liberation , Franco - American contacts started up with re- newed vigor during what Claude - Edmonde Magny has called “ the age of the American novel . ” Richard Wright was at the forefront of this , along ...
Page 5
... 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 . During the fifties , however , he was still ...
... 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 . During the fifties , however , he was still ...
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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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