Bricktop's Paris

African American Women in Paris between the Two World Wars

T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781438455020
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Black Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

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 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.

INDEX

Abatino, Pepito, 41, 43, 44–46, 47, 67, 148, 173, 353n66

Abbott, Robert Sengstacke, 76

Académie Julian, 98, 116

Achilles, Louis, 116

A Moveable Feast, (Ernest Hemingway), 8

“Adelaide Hall New Star of Paris Night Life: Her ‘Big Apple’ Glows Over Rue Pigalle” (Langston Hughes), 17

“Adventures on Roller Skates” (Jessie Fauset), 73

African American GI’s, 7, 18

Alberta Hunter: A Celebration in Blues (Frank C. Taylor and Gerald Cook), 23, 351n10, 366n2

Baker, Josephine, 8, 11, 12, 13, 32, 33, 40–47, 70, 146, 147, 151, 165, 168, 350n11, 352n20, 353n50, 353n63, 353n66

Baldwin, James, 10

Being Geniuses Together: A Binocular View of Paris in the ’20s (Robert McAlmon), 35–36, 352n41

Benneteau-Desgrois, Felix, 137, 138

Bennett, Gwendolyn, 13, 86, 88–90, 93, 94–97, 100–102, 121, 130, 167, 358n41, 358n45, 359n66, 359n72

Benstock, Shari (Women of the Left Bank), 10, 350n9

Big Apple (nightclub), 8, 70, 71, 72, 356n135

Blackbirds 1926, 48, 55, 70

Blackbirds 1928, 68, 69

Blackbirds 1929, 8, 57, 70

Black Internationalism, 9, 150

“Black Paris” (Eslanda Goode Robeson), 15, 148–149, 151, 153

Blake, Eubie, 34, 40, 48, 95, 99

Bonner, Marita, 5

“Boitelle” (Guy de Maupassant), 5

Bougival, 32, 70, 152

Brownie’s Book, The, 73, 74, 86

Bullard, Eugene Jacques, 22–24, 27, 28, 7...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• The Women
• Map of Bricktop’s Paris
• Map Key
• Book I. Bricktop’s Paris
• Book II. The Autobiography of Ada “Bricktop” Smith, or Miss Baker Regrets
• Glossary (Book II)
• Notes to Book I
• List of Archives and Libraries
• Selected Bibliography
• Index to Book 1
• Back Cover