A memoir from a remarkable woman. The book reads as a series of impressions experienced as she rose from an impoverished background to be a celebrated success. It is an honest, genuine, chatty memoir that makes light of her achievements but delights in the anecdotal and memorable detail that occur in a life. She is self effacing but acted with genuine courage in WW2 and after when travelling through USA. She tells it as it is and lets events speak for themselves. When dealing with discrimination in USA, this becomes shocking and is a telling indictment on the prejudices that denigrate people of colour. This made the book a worthwhile read.

It's a pity the word 'icon' has been so determinedly stripped of all meaning; describing Josephine Baker as simply a dancer feels like taking the piss, but equally, she never gives the impression here of being quite happy with her singing or acting, and certainly not in the recorded form which is all that remains to us now. Or at least, all bar what could be captured in words, including her own, taken down here by the journalist Marcel Sauvage. Who's a more substantial presence than many modern ghosts, often directly addressed by his subject, very occasionally even adding a note of his own – which I think I find more honest than the pretence of ventriloquism. Of course, he may be finessing what she said to him; I can say that she comes across in a way that fits perfectly with what I already knew of her, but perhaps that's simply because his mythography has been so influential over the decades? Whichever: the Josephine Baker here is a fabulous, exhausting personality, scandalising and fascinating Europe between the wars, magnetic focus of a culture war long before they were called that. If she can sometimes come recall a Miss World contestant in her uncomplicated enthusiasm for animals, love and people just getting along, it's never long before you're reminded that she was happier than most to live up to those sentiments when things got tough, running messages for the Resistance despite failing health, and going up against the vile reality of postwar American racism (brutally open in the South, more insidious up North) when she could easily have stayed away. She's also clear-sighted about the storms around her, and mostly about the arts and the wider world – which is not to say there aren't occasional lapses, from her scepticism of talkies to a section on Harlem's Jewish landlords and managers for which the modern introduction quite understandably feels obliged to apologise. And then mixed in with all of that, you also get recipes and beauty tips; I was just thinking that the simplicity of the latter seemed ripe for a new TikTok trend when we got on to the bit about finding a fat rattlesnake and skinning it alive and yeah, OK, perhaps not. The jumping from topic to topic and general sense of fizzing energy did mean this wasn't a book I could have sat and read straight through; I know amateur, remote diagnoses are frowned upon, but it's tied with Kieran Culkin interviews for times when I have thought 'Even compared to the people I hang around with, this person seems incredibly ADHD'. But taken in small doses, it really gets across how remarkable she was in a way memoirs don't always manage, even if it also serves as a reminder of how often humanity as a whole seems determined to repeat the same stupid conflicts.

(Netgalley ARC)

3.5 rounded up

Josephine Baker 1906 - 1975
In this memoir, Josephine Baker spoke to French journalist Marcel Sauvage, giving him a series of interviews about her life up to 1949.
Who was Josephine Baker? She was born in 1906 in St. Louis Missouri, a mixed race girl who left the city of her birth and travelled to New York to work in theatres and as a teenager made her way to Paris. Here she became a famous dancer, famed for her banana dress in the Danse Sauvage, a jazz singer and an actress. She was beautiful, unforgettable, enigmatic, hugely gifted, an animal lover, a philanthropist, an activist, a World War II spy who became world renowned.

I knew of Josephine Baker but didn’t know a lot about her until last year when I read Codename Butterfly by Embassie Susberry which piqued my interest to want to read this memoir. The introduction gave really good context to the interviews, to the bigotry and bias that she and many others faced but it also stressed Baker’s humanity, her humour, her heartache, her bravery, as well as her outrage at injustice. This definitely came through loud and clear in the interviews. However, they are non-linear and a bit confusing at times, especially as the interviews and letters she received ran into one another somewhat randomly. However, it’s also true to say that her warmth, her sense of fun and that generosity of spirit definitely shine through. As a consequence, I understand her better, the hardships of growing up in St. Louis, the difficulties of establishing herself as a black artist in New York and the freedom that she felt in France. There was a great deal of her speaking about her performances around the world and how she was received there and it became a bit one dimensional, almost like a stream of consciousness, perhaps this was inevitable. It did however, give me an appreciation of the direction that her career took and why. Her travels in America especially south of the Mason Dixon line even as an established star were very revealing and obviously alarming.

As the interviews only went up to 1949 there’s obviously nothing about her involvement in the civil rights movement, but gaps can easily be filled by further research and I’m interested and fascinated enough in her to want to do exactly that.

Overall, she had a truly fascinating life. A black star given the honour of induction and immortality in the Panthéon Mausoleum in Paris in November 2021 where she lies alongside other great French people. It was really good to hear her voice through these interviews and it’s a good place to start further research of one of the most interesting people of the 20th century.

With thanks to NetGalley and especially to Random House UK, Vintage for the much appreciated arc in return for an honest review.

It's important to know that this is a memoir rather than an autobiography, and that it's formed from a series of conversations that Baker had with a French journalist: as such, it's chatty, it's uneven. and it's a fairly on the surface account of an amazing woman and her amazing life.

Born at the start of the twentieth century Baker is phenomenal: she's a dancer, a performer, and a movie star; she works for the French Resistance during WW2, and she's part of the Civil Rights movement. She is outspoken about racism and her forceful approach to standing up against injustices.

Nevertheless, I never felt that I really got to grips with Baker: for example, she talks about how she made the decision, as a sixteen year old to just leave her family and go on the stage; she describes how she simply haunted a producer till he agreed to let her join his show; from there, someone comes along and pays her a massive salary just to get her to join their company. There just seems so much that is unspoken about how that all happened in an America which she has described as openly racist.

So this definitely gives a feel for Baker's voice and an outline of what was an incredible life - I just wanted more of everything: more details, more thoughtful contemplation, more body to everything that we're told here. Added to a fuller biography this would make a fantastic companion piece but as a standalone, I felt it just skims the surface of a fascinating life.

What a great read about the extraordinary life of Josephine Baker. Very interesting and informative read about her incredible life and all of her accomplishments