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 ix
... cultural and personal relationships . The relevance of a systematic panorama of such attitudes became clear after discussions with William Gardner Smith and other , notably younger writers like William Melvin Kelley , Ronald Fair , or ...
... cultural and personal relationships . The relevance of a systematic panorama of such attitudes became clear after discussions with William Gardner Smith and other , notably younger writers like William Melvin Kelley , Ronald Fair , or ...
Page xi
... cultural background that would be superfluous to an American audi- ence while taking the corresponding French background for granted . While teaching a seminar at Harvard University in the spring of 1985 , I added material on several ...
... cultural background that would be superfluous to an American audi- ence while taking the corresponding French background for granted . While teaching a seminar at Harvard University in the spring of 1985 , I added material on several ...
Page 2
... culture . Among them were Frederick Douglass ; Booker T. Washington , president of Tuskegee Institute at the height of his fame ; and Mary Church Terrell . But there were also artists like Blind Tom , the pianist , and Roland Hayes ...
... culture . Among them were Frederick Douglass ; Booker T. Washington , president of Tuskegee Institute at the height of his fame ; and Mary Church Terrell . But there were also artists like Blind Tom , the pianist , and Roland Hayes ...
Page 3
... culture and freedom , trying to forget the " red summer " of 1919 and the in- creasing number of lynchings . Black and white alike were fleeing from Prohibition and puritanism . They took advantage of the strong dollar to have a good ...
... culture and freedom , trying to forget the " red summer " of 1919 and the in- creasing number of lynchings . Black and white alike were fleeing from Prohibition and puritanism . They took advantage of the strong dollar to have a good ...
Page 4
... cultural unity of the op- pressed black diaspora . Aimé Césaire found in it the celebration of the " proud nigger , " which he wrote about in his Cahier d'un retour au pays natal . After France's liberation Senghor - by then the estab ...
... cultural unity of the op- pressed black diaspora . Aimé Césaire found in it the celebration of the " proud nigger , " which he wrote about in his Cahier d'un retour au pays natal . After France's liberation Senghor - by then the estab ...
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