ABOUT THE FILM
For more than a century, African American artists, authors, musicians and others have traveled to Paris to liberate themselves from the racism of the United States. What made these African Americans choose France? Why were the French fascinated by African Americans? And to what extent was and is France truly colorblind?
This film investigates these questions and examines the ways that racism has plagued not only African Americans fleeing the United States, but Africans and people of color in France today. The film explores the lives and careers of renowned African Americans who emigrated to Paris, including Josephine Baker, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Beauford Delaney, Augusta Savage, Barbara Chase-Riboud, and Lois Mailou Jones, and includes rare home movie footage of Henry Ossawa Tanner in Paris.
Myth of a Colorblind France features interviews with Michel Fabre (author of a landmark biography on Richard Wright), psychoanalyst and jazz aficionado Francis Hofstein, poet James Emanuel, historian Tyler Stovall, filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris, graffiti artist Quik, hip hop producer Ben the Glorious Bastard, African drummer Karim Toure, and many more.
This film investigates these questions and examines the ways that racism has plagued not only African Americans fleeing the United States, but Africans and people of color in France today. The film explores the lives and careers of renowned African Americans who emigrated to Paris, including Josephine Baker, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Beauford Delaney, Augusta Savage, Barbara Chase-Riboud, and Lois Mailou Jones, and includes rare home movie footage of Henry Ossawa Tanner in Paris.
Myth of a Colorblind France features interviews with Michel Fabre (author of a landmark biography on Richard Wright), psychoanalyst and jazz aficionado Francis Hofstein, poet James Emanuel, historian Tyler Stovall, filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris, graffiti artist Quik, hip hop producer Ben the Glorious Bastard, African drummer Karim Toure, and many more.
Questions to CONSIDER BEFORE viewing the film
- What is myth?
- The word “myth” can embody opposing and contradictory ideas. Do you know what they are? Which one do you think of first when you hear or read this word?
- Is myth “true”? Is it “false”?
- Is it a strategy?
- Is it an opportunity?
- When you hear the words “Myth of a Colorblind France,” what do you think of first?
Questions to be answered after viewing the film
- Did viewing Myth of a Colorblind France change your definition of the word “myth”?
- If so, how did it change?
- When you hear the words “Myth of a Colorblind France,” what do you think of now?
- What surprised you about the film?
- With regard to race, what does “colorblind” mean? In the U.S.? In France?
- What are some historical reasons that African Americans came to view France as “colorblind”?
- Who are some well-known African Americans whose experiences in France led to this view?
- Why do some people in France (aspire to) see themselves as colorblind?
- What is French universalism?
- What is racism?
- What is privilege?
- Do you feel that you benefit from privilege?
- If so, in what way?
- With regard to race, how do the perceptions and experiences of African Americans in the U.S. today differ from those of African Americans in France? White Americans in France? White French? Africans in France? Afro-French?
- Why do white French people view African Americans in France differently from Africans and Afro-French?
- What are some ways in which racism is manifested in France?
- What is a documentary? What do we expect from a documentary? How can we analyze a documentary?
- What makes Myth of a Colorblind France a documentary? How is it different from television documentaries?
- How does our positionality/identity influence our viewing of Myth of a Colorblind France? Our assumptions about the film? About myth? About colorblindness? About France? About privilege?
- After seeing the film, what or whom do you want to know more about?
EXCERPTS FROM
Muslim Girls and the Other France:
Race, Identity Politics, and Social Exclusion
by Trica Danielle Keaton
Foreword by Manthia Diawara
FOREWORD
Dear France, You have sowed "Liberté, Egalité, et Fraternité" in your remotest colonies, and now, as they say in America, "The chickens have come home to roost." French Arabs and Africans have come to you to ask for more individual rights. They belong to you and you belong to them, because you have carried them in your womb. They need you most to realize their dream of democracy, equal rights with your other children, and individual dignity. And you, France, you need them as you meet the new global challenges of migration, transnational markets, and multiple identity positions. From now on the world will judge you according to whether they embrace or reject your doctrine of universalism. France, your position as torch-bearer of democracy in the world will depend on their welfare…. |
Dr. Trica D. Keaton's new book provides the most in-depth analysis of the predicament of French Arabs and Africans living in the suburbs of Paris-your capital and symbolic city. As an African American, Professor Keaton has experienced racism first-hand in America. But it is as a social scientist-who has studied with the best of your intellectuals-that she looks at your new citizens and candidates for "Liberté, Egalité, et Fraternité." Trica Keaton spent more than six years doing fieldwork and archival research on children of African and Arab descent who were born in Paris and its suburbs. She followed them at school-where they were taught the values of assimilation, national unity, and the universal equality of individuals. And she went with them to their neighborhoods and homes, where they were discriminated against by your police and public institutions. She found many contradictions between what you promised them through education, on the one hand, and what they experienced daily, on the other hand.
France, you may not like what you are going to find in Dr. Keaton's book. But remember what Jean-Paul Sartre once said in his introduction to L. S. Senghor's book Anthologie de la nouvelle poesie nègre et malgache de langue française. Sartre argued that French people would not like being perceived and judged by those whom they had colonized. Since they had always looked at the colonized and judged them, they would not enjoy hearing from them that colonialism was oppressive and evil. But, for Sartre, it was necessary for Frenchmen to listen to what the Black African, the Arab, and other wretched of the earth had to say. Conditions in those days were such that decolonization movements had heated up-there was Indochina, and Algeria soon after. In Paris, the Negritude poets had returned the gaze, and French people were their object of perception in a rapidly changing world. Sartre correctly thought that it was important for the French people to try to understand what the other was saying. Sartre went as far as to call Senghor's anthology the most committed in France at the time.
Trica Keaton's book is not about the colonizer and colonized, nor even about immigration, although it could be read that way. It is about your children whose ancestors may have issued from colonialism, or even slavery. Counting the French Caribbeans, today, there are more than eight million people of Arab and African descent living in France. They suffer humiliation at the hands of the authorities, and their civil and citizenship rights are continually violated by people who treat them as foreigners simply on the basis of the color of their skin. This book is mainly about their experiences in the "Metropole."
France, you may not like what you are going to find in Dr. Keaton's book. But remember what Jean-Paul Sartre once said in his introduction to L. S. Senghor's book Anthologie de la nouvelle poesie nègre et malgache de langue française. Sartre argued that French people would not like being perceived and judged by those whom they had colonized. Since they had always looked at the colonized and judged them, they would not enjoy hearing from them that colonialism was oppressive and evil. But, for Sartre, it was necessary for Frenchmen to listen to what the Black African, the Arab, and other wretched of the earth had to say. Conditions in those days were such that decolonization movements had heated up-there was Indochina, and Algeria soon after. In Paris, the Negritude poets had returned the gaze, and French people were their object of perception in a rapidly changing world. Sartre correctly thought that it was important for the French people to try to understand what the other was saying. Sartre went as far as to call Senghor's anthology the most committed in France at the time.
Trica Keaton's book is not about the colonizer and colonized, nor even about immigration, although it could be read that way. It is about your children whose ancestors may have issued from colonialism, or even slavery. Counting the French Caribbeans, today, there are more than eight million people of Arab and African descent living in France. They suffer humiliation at the hands of the authorities, and their civil and citizenship rights are continually violated by people who treat them as foreigners simply on the basis of the color of their skin. This book is mainly about their experiences in the "Metropole."
In one sense, one can read the book through the lens of such great African American writers and activists as Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Malcolm X. In their radical demand for citizenship, equal rights, and belonging in America, they told the "White Man [to] Listen"; and they threatened the "Fire Next Time." Malcolm X was one of the first to relate the struggle of African Americans in the U.S. to that of other people of color in Europe. Looking at the riots in Birmingham, England, in the 1960s, he cautioned the British that if they were not careful, they would end up with a situation similar to that of the U.S. Professor Keaton's book also contains an implicit warning to you, France, not to reenact American racism in your country. Your Black and Arab children are pleading with you to grant them their full citizenship, to respect their individuality, and to stop American-like ghettoes from surrounding them, separating them from your other children.
But it is as a social scientist that Dr. Keaton reserves her most pressing question for you, France. She calls it "the French dilemma," borrowing the expression from the Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal, who spoke of "the American dilemma." Trica D. Keaton's extensive research has revealed to her that there are "fundamental contradictions between [a] highly abstracted notion of universalism and the lived reality of ethnic distinction and racialized discrimination against people of non-European origins and of color." In other words, your children of Arab and African descent are both assimilated culturally and excluded socially. To borrow an expression from W. E. B. Du Bois-the father of race sociology in America-they experience a double consciousness as the manifestation of living simultaneously within and behind the veil. Therein lies the paradox for you, France: position the veil in one way for a particular result, or another for a totally different outcome. Adjust the definition of "universalism" in light of new modernities and alternative globalizations, or maintain the old concept of French universalism, so dear to the National Front and other conservatives and racists. Either way you will have a different France: democratic and dynamic, or old, conservative, and xenophobic.
The first choice is obviously what all of us, who love you, France, wish for. However, to be flexible with the definition of universalism does not mean to fall back on relativism or to retreat from reason, or even to lock ourselves into some form of fixed identity politics. It means that a strategy has to be found to include your "Other" children in the nation, without reducing them to an outdated identity of Frenchness, or ethnic absolutism. It means mobilizing everyone toward a common goal of "Liberté, Egalité, et Fraternité" without taking away their soul. Finally, it means realizing that people from different origins embrace their French identity in a different manner, without using that difference to divide them. A multicultural France is what we're calling for-a country that is still in the making, and yet is the beacon of democracy and reason. Your universalism is one that keeps rediscovering its essence in its new members, instead of being represented as fixed and timeless. We have to dare to think of a France that is not yet completed, and whose future depends also on the children of African and Arab descent.
Next to this dream of a multicultural France, an absolutist and ethnocentric model of universalism currently prevails in most institutions and public spheres. It picks on trivial symbols, such as Arab girls' wearing the veil to go to school, to exclude them from your family. It denies French citizenship to Black children born in the suburbs of Paris because their parents came here illegally. It mobilizes the images of radical Imams, lawbreakers, and the unemployed to demonize whole communities that it declares unfit to be included in your family. In short, this tendency relies on stereotypes and other outward forms of representation as weapons in a war against the "Other." It tries to maintain your children of African and Arab descent in a position that Pierre Bourdieu calls "beings perceived" as foreigners, and not as French.
France, if you stay on the course of ethnic absolutism, you will be forced to reject not only some of your children, but also the idealism that made you famed around the world: "Liberté, Egalité, et Fraternité." The universalism you should want to defend is freedom and democracy for the oppressed, not some unitary way of being French in this global world. The universalism you should extend to the world is the French hospitality and inclusion of the oppressed in your family instead of sending them back at the mercy of dictators, religious fanatics, and intolerant cultural environments. France, you need a new and as usual, courageous universalism that can cope with the modern global challenges, instead of retreating from them.
Finally, France, you do not need to take sides in the identity discourses and political struggle between the National Front and the veiled Muslim girls. They’re both symptoms of a changing world in which their roles are diminishing. They may hide behind your flag or envelop themselves in it, but they are not the torch-bearers. You are, France. Dr. Keaton’s book shows that it is not the veil that is the problem, but the schools and the environment in which the children grow up. Her excellent research reveals, to anybody who is willing to read it, how you, France, can solve your dilemma. I hope that you’ll have the courage to read it.
Sincerely,
Manthia Diawara
New York, Accra, Paris
January 17, 2005
But it is as a social scientist that Dr. Keaton reserves her most pressing question for you, France. She calls it "the French dilemma," borrowing the expression from the Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal, who spoke of "the American dilemma." Trica D. Keaton's extensive research has revealed to her that there are "fundamental contradictions between [a] highly abstracted notion of universalism and the lived reality of ethnic distinction and racialized discrimination against people of non-European origins and of color." In other words, your children of Arab and African descent are both assimilated culturally and excluded socially. To borrow an expression from W. E. B. Du Bois-the father of race sociology in America-they experience a double consciousness as the manifestation of living simultaneously within and behind the veil. Therein lies the paradox for you, France: position the veil in one way for a particular result, or another for a totally different outcome. Adjust the definition of "universalism" in light of new modernities and alternative globalizations, or maintain the old concept of French universalism, so dear to the National Front and other conservatives and racists. Either way you will have a different France: democratic and dynamic, or old, conservative, and xenophobic.
The first choice is obviously what all of us, who love you, France, wish for. However, to be flexible with the definition of universalism does not mean to fall back on relativism or to retreat from reason, or even to lock ourselves into some form of fixed identity politics. It means that a strategy has to be found to include your "Other" children in the nation, without reducing them to an outdated identity of Frenchness, or ethnic absolutism. It means mobilizing everyone toward a common goal of "Liberté, Egalité, et Fraternité" without taking away their soul. Finally, it means realizing that people from different origins embrace their French identity in a different manner, without using that difference to divide them. A multicultural France is what we're calling for-a country that is still in the making, and yet is the beacon of democracy and reason. Your universalism is one that keeps rediscovering its essence in its new members, instead of being represented as fixed and timeless. We have to dare to think of a France that is not yet completed, and whose future depends also on the children of African and Arab descent.
Next to this dream of a multicultural France, an absolutist and ethnocentric model of universalism currently prevails in most institutions and public spheres. It picks on trivial symbols, such as Arab girls' wearing the veil to go to school, to exclude them from your family. It denies French citizenship to Black children born in the suburbs of Paris because their parents came here illegally. It mobilizes the images of radical Imams, lawbreakers, and the unemployed to demonize whole communities that it declares unfit to be included in your family. In short, this tendency relies on stereotypes and other outward forms of representation as weapons in a war against the "Other." It tries to maintain your children of African and Arab descent in a position that Pierre Bourdieu calls "beings perceived" as foreigners, and not as French.
France, if you stay on the course of ethnic absolutism, you will be forced to reject not only some of your children, but also the idealism that made you famed around the world: "Liberté, Egalité, et Fraternité." The universalism you should want to defend is freedom and democracy for the oppressed, not some unitary way of being French in this global world. The universalism you should extend to the world is the French hospitality and inclusion of the oppressed in your family instead of sending them back at the mercy of dictators, religious fanatics, and intolerant cultural environments. France, you need a new and as usual, courageous universalism that can cope with the modern global challenges, instead of retreating from them.
Finally, France, you do not need to take sides in the identity discourses and political struggle between the National Front and the veiled Muslim girls. They’re both symptoms of a changing world in which their roles are diminishing. They may hide behind your flag or envelop themselves in it, but they are not the torch-bearers. You are, France. Dr. Keaton’s book shows that it is not the veil that is the problem, but the schools and the environment in which the children grow up. Her excellent research reveals, to anybody who is willing to read it, how you, France, can solve your dilemma. I hope that you’ll have the courage to read it.
Sincerely,
Manthia Diawara
New York, Accra, Paris
January 17, 2005
ON RACE AND CLASSIFICATIONS
Already, "race" discourse is prevalent in French society, so much so that one commonly hears people describe themselves and others as noir (black), beur (Arab), or blanc (white), and use "ethnic roots" (e.g., Gaulois) to mark distinction and difference. Some even identify as "black" rather than noir, and this usage connects them to a U.S. type of consciousness permeating France and parts of Europe. The title alone of Gaston Kelman's (2003) controversial book mocking identity politics in France speaks volumes: Je suis noir et je n'aime pas le manioc (I'm black, and I don't like yams). The putative markers of "race"-skin color, hair, features, language varieties, and by extension family name, religion, and ways of being-have long-standing social meanings in France, underpinned and enlivened by ideologies and policies acting on them. Scientific racism, which legitimized chattel slavery and colonization, is the most obvious example. And, clearly, views such as those espoused by Arthur de Gobineau in The Inequality of the Human Races (1853) structured both racialist thought and policies in and beyond France, despite Haitian anthropologist Antenor Firmin's fierce rebuttal, The Equality of the Human Race (1885), which went largely ignored.
In many ways, there exists a "French dilemma," similar to what Gunnar Myrdal (1944/1975) identified as an "American dilemma," having to do with the patent contradictions in France between the cherished national values of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and Secularism" (Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, and Laicité) and the consistent practice of targeted racialized discrimination. In the French context, such discrimination, as a social problem, is frequently subsumed in issues of social inequality and immigration, or conflated with xenophobia. |
In other words, people of color are supposedly discriminated against because they are "immigrants" or feared foreigners, not necessarily because they are African or Asian or "black" (De Rudder, Poiret, and Vourc'h 2000). But the fact that a thing is not racially named does not mean it is not racialized. The twist in the French context, compared to the United States, is that it is much more difficult to prove racialized discrimination within the population identified officially as "French," because their ethnic origins are not documented (Simon 2000; Tribalat 1995; Simon and Stavo-Debauge 2002). Various anti-racist organizations have acknowledged that it is necessary to "un-mix" the official category of "French" in order to document and more effectively combat racialized discrimination, despite state and public resistance to this prospect. It is critical to emphasize, all the same, that documenting ethnic origins (implying "race") is considered discriminatory according to the French constitution, and cutting against those universalist principles inhering in the construct of a citizen-individual attached to a nation-state. Moreover, such classifications are viewed through perceptions shaped during the Vichy regime and still conjure up dreaded memories and images of ethnic labeling in France during the Nazi era.
And yet, anti-racist groups, both statist and independent of the state, continue to show that racialized discrimination manifests itself in the most basic social structures, including employment, housing, education, social services, the criminal justice system, and relations with the police. While I examine these issues vis-a-vis the lived experiences of my participants, such realities are, in effect, what constitute social race as a persistent entity, despite the discrediting of biological "race" and the decoding of the human genome. In his study of international race politics, sociologist Michael Banton reminds us of the danger of reproducing through connotation the very thing one seeks to dismantle: "the international anti-racist movement has never known quite what to do about the ways in which the language of race can reinforce the identification of biological and social difference" (2002, 3). And yet, as sociologist Loic Wacquant rightly states when comparing these young people to similar "suitable enemies" in the United States, "foreigners and quasi-foreigners would be the 'blacks' of Europe" (1999b, 216).
Appearances, however, are deceiving, and reality is quite another matter. To ascribe a black/white paradigm to the French context or frame human relations in such neat terms is to err. Although extremely powerful, such reasoning applies only problematically to these youths, whose origins lie on the continent of Africa, where historical migration, invasion, partition, and mixing-indeed, geopolitics-disrupt attempts to identify them in neat black/white terms, despite popular discourse. To uncritically view Arabs as "white" (as do the U.S. census and popular understandings) and sub-Saharan Africans as "black," or to desire (s)kinship with people on the basis of their physical appearance or "looks" (as people commonly do who are conditioned by black/white paradigms) is equally to err. It further leaves little room for people to self-understand outside narrow categories reified into representations of culture. The point is that the supposed markers of "race" can be erroneous indicators of ethnic and national origins, and do not signify culture. After all, people who self-understand as African or Arab have a variety of complexions and features. More to the point, being perceived as African or Arab in French society has never carried the same advantages as being perceived as French, which signifies European ancestry and, increasingly, "whiteness." The formation and claiming of a self-representation articulated as French or "French of 'x' origin" by youth of color and immigration become, then, a signpost in France. It announces what may be a transformation in the official classification system, should these youths continue to be distinguished, and distinguish themselves, from the francais-francais ("French -French," the supposedly unequivocal or "old stock" French).
REFLECTIONS ON PARIS AND THE CRAFT OF FIELDWORK IN A PARISIAN OUTER CITY
… Ironically, Paris, which so many expatriate and exiled Black Americans from the nineteenth century to the present have perceived as a haven from U.S. racism, has rarely been a safe and liberating sanctuary for the descendants of those enslaved and colonized by France (Gondola 2004). To be sure, U.S. race terror, its structural manifestations, and the threat of physical violence-lynchings, random beatings, and rape-fueled emigration to Paris during the pre-Civil Rights era. Moreover, migration narratives imbued with tales of an all-embracing Parisian society where neither Jim nor Jacques Crow resided were compelling, and played decisive roles in the formation of an image of a color-blind France that continues to pull U.S. Blacks to the City of Light (Robeson 1936; Drake 1982; Irele 1981/1991; Fabre 1993; Stovall 1996; Wright 2003). Although Black internationalists worked to dispel this notion from the turn of the century through the 1960s (for example, Rene Maran, Tiemoko Garan Kouyate, Claude McKay, Alioune Diop, W. E. B. Du Bois, Mercer Cook, James Baldwin, and William Gardner Smith), Paris has been and remains significant to African Americans precisely because of that myth. More importantly, Paris has been an essential meeting ground, a space for Black cosmopolitanism, intellectualism, and border crossings seemingly available nowhere else, despite the reality of inimical treatment of people of African origin (Jules-Rosette 1998; Julien 2000; Edwards 2003). And while Black Americans were once shielded from this treatment by their nationality or by speaking English or French with an American accent, distinguishing themselves from the Afro-French (or Black French), these resources offer little protection today. Fake passports are easily obtained, and African Americans are not the only Blacks with American passports. Neither are we the only speakers of English in this diaspora city where transcultural cross-fertilizations make it difficult to know who is who, and from which part of the diaspora people hail.
Because I am both a Black woman and a researcher, my desire to document what I feel to be an important shift in identity and cultural politics in France also exposed me to much of the same discrimination and antagonism confronted by people of African origin in Paris. Yet, with that said, I cannot stress enough that I also had a relative freedom of mobility, thanks to identification cards showing my affiliation to some of the more prestigious universities in Paris. I also had the aegis of my nationality, although it was not always an asset in doing fieldwork of this nature, particularly when anti-U.S. sentiment was running high or when I faced anti-black discrimination and hostilities from people ranging from the neighborhood baker to personnel at the American Embassy, who never immediately took me to be American. Otherwise, I was a "being perceived" from any number of African countries or the Caribbean, or as someone trying to "pass" as a Black American, subject again to the same disregard and disdain. And while I have spent a number of years learning French and have taken pride in masking my U.S. accent, such diligence came with unanticipated costs. That is, in concealing that notorious linguistic marker, I also exposed myself to the uglier side of human relations in urban France. However, what was a hardship for me personally was, interestingly, an asset for me as a researcher. Living the experience of racism necessarily sensitized me to the hostilities and incivilities typically reserved for those with whom I'm assigned (s)kinship relations and with whom I desire greater kinship. But certainly, my experiences pale in comparison to documented examples of outright violence experienced by people of African origin and other "suitable enemies" in France. Through their eyes and my own experiences, Paris is both appalling and sublime, like a number of diaspora cities. It is perhaps for those reasons that I am continually drawn toward the complexities of these places, despite the hostile reception I may receive, a reception predicated on the prevailing despised categories of the day, be they defined by class, "race," color, gender, nationality, or national origins.
LEARN MORE
ABOUT PEOPLE IN THE FILM
JOSEPHINE BAKER
On November 30, 2021, Josephine Baker became the first Black woman and first American to be inducted into the French Panthéon. Read the full story and learn more about Josephine Baker in this article from NPR.
James Baldwin
After an introduction to his life and work by Library of Congress Poetry Consultant Gwendolyn Brooks, author James Baldwin reads selections from two essays published in the 1950s and several passages from his fictional works. Recorded Apr. 28, 1986, in the Coolidge Auditorium at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
Richard Wright
Listen to Richard Wright speak of his love of Paris. The segment, published in an article by WNYC, originally aired in October 1950 as part of the first WNYC Art Festival for a program called The Art World of Paris.
Barbara Chase-Riboud
In 2021, Barbara Chase-Riboud was the Laureate of Prix d'Honneur from AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions. Read the full story in this article and learn more about Barbara Chase-Riboud.
Visit Barbara Chase-Riboud's personal website.
ADDITIONAL VIDEOS
ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHS
recommended READING
*Published in French
- Archer-Straw, Petrine. Negrophilia. Thames & Hudson, 2000.
- *Bachollet, Raymond, et al. Négripub: L’image des Noirs dans la publicité. Editions Somogy, 1992
- Baker, Josephine and Jo Bouillon. Josephine. Harper & Row Publishers, 1977.
- Baldwin, James. The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction 1948-1985. St. Martin’s Press, 1985.
- *Bancel, Nicolas, et al. Zoos Humains: de la Vénus Hottentote aux Reality Shows. Editions La Découverte, 2002.
- Bernard, Catherine. Afro-American Artists in Paris: 1919-1939. Hunter College, 1989.
- *Blanchard, Pascal, et al. Le Paris Noir. Hazan, 2001.
- *---. La France Noire. Editions La Découverte, 2011.
- Bomani, Asake and Belvie Rooks, editors. Paris Connections: African-American Artists in Paris. Q.E.D. Press, 1992.
- Bricktop with Haskins, James. Bricktop. Welcome Rain Publishers, 2000.
- Bruce, Marcus C. Henry Ossawa Tanner: A Spiritual Biography. The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2002.
- Campbell, James. Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin. University of California Press, 1991.
- *Chalaye, Sylvie. Du Noir au Nègre: L’Image du Noir au Théâtre (1550-1960). Editions L’Harmattan, 1998.
- Chase-Riboud, Barbara. Sally Hemings: A Novel. Viking Press, 1979.
- ---. Hottentot Venus: A Novel. Doubleday, 2003.
- Chatterton-Williams, Thomas. “Is Paris Still a Haven for Black Americans?” Smithsonian Journeys Travel Quarterly: Paris, 23, Apr. 2015, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/paris-still-haven-blackamericans-180955082/.
- Fabre, Michel. From Harlem to Paris: Black American Writers in France, 1840-1980. University of Illinois Press, 1991.
- Himes, Chester. My Life of Absurdity. Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1976.
- Jackson, Jeffrey H. Making Jazz French. Duke University Press, 2003.
- Jules-Rosette, Bennetta. Josephine Baker in Art and Life: The Icon and the Image. University of Illinois Press, 2007.
- Keaton, Trica Danielle. Muslim Girls and the Other France: Race, Identity Politics, & Social Exclusion. Indiana University Press, 2006.
- Keith, Phil with Tom Clavin. All Blood Runs Red: The Legendary Life of Eugene Bullard – Boxer, Pilot, Soldier, Spy. Hanover Square Press, 2019.
- Lamar, Jake. Rendezvous Eighteenth: A Novel. St. Martin’s Minotaur, 2003.
- ---. Ghosts of Saint-Michel: A Novel. St. Martin’s Minotaur, 2006.
- Leeming, David. James Baldwin. Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.
- Leininger-Miller, Theresa. New Negro Artists in Paris: African American Painters and Sculptors in the City of Light, 1922-1934. Rutgers University Press, 2001.
- Lloyd, Craig. Eugene Bullard, Black Expatriate in Jazz-Age Paris. University of Georgia Press, 2000.
- Lordi, Emily. “The Black Artists Leaving America.” The New York Times Style Magazine, 20, Aug. 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/20/t-magazine/black-artists-expatriates.html.
- Mitchell, Robin. Vénus Noire: Black Women and Colonial Fantasies in Nineteenth-Century France. University of Georgia Press, 2020.
- Morgan, Sharon Leslie. Paris in a Pot: Living a Dream in the City of Light (A Memoir). Sharon Leslie Morgan, 2016.
- Rampersad, Arnold. The Life of Langston Hughes. Volume I: 1902-1941. I, Too, Sing America. Oxford University Press, 1986.
- Rowley, Hazel. Richard Wright. Henry Holt and Company, 2001.
- Selz, Peter and Anthony F. Janson. Barbara Chase Riboud, Sculptor. Harry N Abrams, Inc., 1999.
- Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean. Black Venus: Sexualized Savages, Primal Fears, and Primitive Narratives in French. Duke University Press, 1999.
- ---. Negritude Women. University of Minnesota Press, 2002.
- ---. Bricktop’s Paris. State University of New York Press, 2015.
- Stovall, Tyler. Paris Noir. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996.
- The Studio Museum in Harlem. Explorations in the City of Light: African-American Artists in Paris, 1945-1965. The Studio Museum in Harlem, 1996.
This Education Guide is being developed by Monique Y. Wells, Paddy Bowman, Alan Govenar, and Jason Johnson-Spinos. It is produced by Documentary Arts with support from the Florence Gould Foundation.
We aim to include as many perspectives as possible on the complicated issues raised by the film. We welcome your input.
We aim to include as many perspectives as possible on the complicated issues raised by the film. We welcome your input.
Copyright © 2023 Documentary Arts
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