Bricktop's Paris

Bricktop's Paris
Author :
Publisher : SUNY Press
Total Pages : 400
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781438455013
ISBN-13 : 1438455011
Rating : 4/5 (011 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Bricktop's Paris by : T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting

Download or read book Bricktop's Paris written by T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2015-02-01 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells the fascinating story of African American women who traveled to France to seek freedom of expression. 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. “Bricktop’s Paris vibrantly recreates and reimagines the fascinating world of Jazz Age Paris by placing black women at the center of the story. T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting gives us a valuable new perspective on Ada “Bricktop” Smith, giving her the prominence usually attributed to Josephine Baker. She also provides detailed portraits of other singers, musicians, writers, and artists who left America for the French capital. Written with enthusiasm and insight, Bricktop’s Paris underscores the importance of women to transatlantic black modernity.” — Tyler Stovall, author of Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light “Bricktop’s Paris is a remarkable feat. Sharpley-Whiting’s book is a woman’s story about dreaming and making dreams happen. It is a political story, a story about migration, and re-creation. It is a dazzling account of bold women reshaping their lives as New Women/Modern Women and black women in Europe. A woman’s place is not only viewed in the sphere of domesticity through Sharpley-Whiting’s writing, she also reimagines the complexity of life far away from home and on stage, in the studio, and in the nightclub. She captures their spirit and desires and walks us through this history arm and arm, singing, writing, dancing, and making art. I fell in love with these women as I empathized with their struggles, some of them I knew through other writings but through Sharpley-Whiting I felt as if I knew them intimately as they made their lives count some fifty years after Reconstruction. She restores their voices and their bodies and makes them present for the contemporary reader. Brilliant!” — Deborah Willis, author of Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present “Bricktop’s Paris is a marvelous book that further consolidates Sharpley-Whiting’s record of pioneering research, a meticulous archeological excavation of the artistic, cultural, political, and social contributions made by African American women in Paris during the interwar years. This was a period that increasingly linked racial advocacy with colonial emancipation and during which African American women achieved unprecedented levels of creative and personal freedom while shaping broader conversations on identity and race. Bricktop’s Paris promises to inspire a new generation of researchers and will become an incontrovertible point of reference in assessing the intellectual history of the era.” — Dominic Thomas, Madeleine L. Letessier Professor of French and Francophone Studies, University of California, Los Angeles


Bricktop's Paris Related Books

Bricktop's Paris
Language: en
Pages: 400
Authors: T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2015-02-01 - Publisher: SUNY Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Tells the fascinating story of African American women who traveled to France to seek freedom of expression. During the Jazz Age, France became a place where an
Bricktop's Paris
Language: en
Pages: 400
Authors: T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting
Categories: Social Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2015-01-31 - Publisher: State University of New York Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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
Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Language: en
Pages: 449
Authors: Aberjhani
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2003 - Publisher: Infobase Publishing

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Presents articles on the period known as the Harlem Renaissance, during which African American artists, poets, writers, thinkers, and musicians flourished in Ha
The Scene of Harlem Cabaret
Language: en
Pages: 272
Authors: Shane Vogel
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2009-04 - Publisher: University of Chicago Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Harlem's nightclubs in the 1920s and '30s were a crucible for testing society's racial and sexual limits. Combining performance theory, historical research, and
Harlem in Montmartre
Language: en
Pages: 214
Authors: William A. Shack
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2001-09-04 - Publisher: Univ of California Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Illuminates the expatriate African American community of jazz musicians that thrived in the Montmartre district of Paris in the '20s and '30s and helped turn th