This is the iconic Josephine Baker in her own words.
Funny, candid and the wildly famous but elusive Josephine Baker tells her own story in this enchanting memoir. Baker took Paris by storm in the 1920s, dazzling audiences with her humour, beauty and effervescence on stage. She became an icon. Hemingway, Jean Cocteau and Picasso admired her; Shirley Bassey adored her. It was told she strolled the streets of Paris with her pet cheetah who wore a diamond collar.
Later, as one of the most recognisable women in the world, she became a spy for the French resistance, her celebrity working as her cover. She was awarded the Légion d'Honneur for military service. After the war she became increasingly interested in civil rights. In 1963 she spoke at the March on Washington alongside Martin Luther King. All this from a girl born in Missouri to a poor single black woman and a white father she did not know.
Formed from a series of conversations with the French journalist Marcel Sauvage, over a period of more than twenty years, and now translated into English for the first time, this gorgeous book offers an insight into one of the most beguiling figures of the twentieth century.
‘The most sensational woman anyone ever saw’ Ernest Hemingway
American-French entertainer Josephine Baker, originally Freda Josephine McDonald, a popular jazz dancer and singer in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s, worked for the Resistance during World War II.
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 rich 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 an amazing woman! She went after the life she wanted despite all the rejection she got. She never stopped. She was a total force of nature. She was beloved and reviled. She was admired and abhorred. But this memoir is in her words and tells us who she wants us to see. Talented, forceful, artistic, and even patriotic (albeit to the French).
Three stars because it was mostly like a catalog of her travels and some brief commentary of each place. It didn’t really have much in the way of her relationships with her family or friends, and even her husbands.
The foreword from Ijeoma Oluo was fantastic. I loved her book Mediocre. The foreword was perfect, and it added a nice touch.
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.
Jade Wheeler gives a stellar reading of Josephine Baker's conversational memoir of her artistic process and performing. A common complaint in the reviews for this book is that people wanted more detail. Memoir isn't always auto biographical in this way; sometimes it's more creative and I think this is a good example of that. I love the form, personally, of recreations of Baker's conversations with a journalist friend. I felt like I was having coffee with this brilliant, brave woman, who was also artistic and completely breezy. Loved this one, so glad I happened across it in Libby!
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.
"The dancer, the singer, the ingénue, the scandal maker, the activist, the spy."
Josephine Baker led a fascinating life. Fearless and Free gives a strong impression of her vivid personality and life through her own words. It can feel a little scattered, perhaps due to the random nature of the interviews used to make the book, which took place over twenty years, but perhaps also because of the quick and darting nature of Josephine's mind as she recounts her own experiences. She's a vivacious entertainer, a people person, determined, resilient, and truly one of a kind. Her love for Paris and her adopted country of France shine through.
I was particularly interested by the chapters about her life during WWII, her struggle with chronic illness, and her experiences around race, especially on her return to the US. Understandably, she doesn't give away too much about her life as a spy for the French resistance!
Fearless and Free will definitely make you want to check out videos of Josephine Baker dancing and singing. I'd like to read more about her, though nothing may be as effective as hearing about her in her own words.
I am so sad about this book because I was initially stoked to find that it existed. Imagine...Josephine Baker, one of the most interesting women of the 20th century recounting her memories!
Sadly, this reminded me of listening to my grandma tell stories about people from her past and assuming that I know who she's talking about or that I'm interested in hearing about the minutia of their lives.
However, there is a section at the end that is incredibly interesting. Ms. Baker talks about coming back to a segregated America after living in France for so long. She recounts a trip she made to the south and it was fascinating. Other than that, I don't feel like I have any knowledge of Josephine other than which cities she performed in and how she eventually won over each city with her dancing. I'm super bummed...
The narration is excellent, as is the audio. The narration is what kept me listening as the format is pretty meh.
I wasn't crazy of the format of the book. I'm not sure how it would go in print as it seems like the book was taken from notes more than written by Josephine Baker herself, although the book was first published in 1949, so perhaps it was a style choice at the time.
The content of the book, as far as information, is fantastic. There are passages that are extremely entertaining, and the narrators make it seem like it's happening right now, with great emphasis on what is going on creating a fantastic atmosphere.
I was furious to discover that dancer, singer, spy, icon Josephine Baker had a memoir, and that we simply didn’t have it because it wasn’t translated. What in the world took so long! A man named Marcel Sauvage interviewed Baker throughout the course of her life, and brought it together into a memoir in her own words; it has been translated by Anam Zafar and Sophie Lewis, and published in English as Fearless and Free: A Memoir.
And what a memoir it is. Baker’s voice is vivid, sparkling, right in front of you. She’s a funny, captivating storyteller, a natural, like a charismatic star lifted from a Hollywood film. You can see her as she speaks, you’re drawn into her energy. She describes her start in St. Louis, writes a love letter to Paris, the place where she found her home. Discusses her service during WWII in the French Resistance and how she considered it simply her duty; talks about her love for animals, her love for children. Describes being labeled all kinds of things in the name of politics and religion, condemned and celebrated. Describes her travels, and damningly describes her shock at the racism she experienced in the United States after WWII. “Songs have a soul,” she says. “You’ve got to give them a soul and feed that soul. That’s where their value lies. But sometimes a song’s soul chokes you.”
It’s not perefct—it is, after all, an oral memoir put together in retrospect, and some parts can be confusing or meander a bit. Also, as acknowledged in the introduction, there’s a part about Jews being racist in New York that’s unfortunate. But this memoir’s punch and rush is thrilling, and Baker is such an incredible person and personality. These pages hold that voice spectacularly, and that’s a truly amazing gift.
Content warnings for anti-Semitism, racism, g-slur, indigenous stereotypes, n-word.
What a surprise find in this book. I was familiar with the name Josephine Baker but didn't know much about her except her Caberet style, over the top performances. She was so much more. She was progressive, independent, outspoken on human and animal rights, a philanthropist and a French war hero, her adopted country, and so much more. I thoroughly enjoyed her memoir.
This is a must read. Absolutely loved it. When I say I have waited decades to read this book, I mean it. I couldn't find it anywhere. It was first published in 1949. Just re-released! Josephine Baker is one of the most extraordinary fascinating figures in history. If you don't know what she did for the poor, for children, for animals, and for the war front...you need to discover her. Just incredible. We just missed her induction into the Panthéon in Paris when we were there in 2021. We made pilgrimage to her cenotaph in the Panthéon in 2023. You have to know it's EXTRAORDINARY that a Black woman, an American Black woman, has been inducted into the halls of the Panthéon. Take note... it is extremely conversational. Don't look for conventional writing. She literally told her memoirs... these are conversations about her exploits and wanderings. Don't sleep on this one. She should be everyone's hero...
Josephine Baker 1906- 1975 Josephine was so many things, an iconic dancer, singer, spy and civil rights activist. She spent most of her career in France, where she was accepted after not being accepted in the United States for her color where she was born. Her musical talent gained visits to the Kings of different countries. She traveled all over Europe before World War II . She never had children of her own, but loved all the little ones, when she met them. She had an array of pets and often traveled with them. When she was given a gold cross in France for her humanitarian, she sold it to give the money to the resistance efforts during the war.
I want to thank Penguin House for sending me this ARC book.
Fearless and Free has been the best memoir that I've read this year.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Josephine Baker was an icon, and this collection of her thoughts and recollections of her days gone by, told in pure raconteur style, had me totally engaged. It is not a chronological history, it doesn't give you the biographical details you might expect, but what this book does is give you stories, insights into French culture at a certain period in history. You can hear the jazz, smell the cafe culture, the vino, and feel yourself becoming a fly on the wall to these great moments. A wonderful read.
While I enjoyed learning about Josephine Baker and her life through her own words, I felt more was missing. I liked that this felt like I was sitting down to interview a great aunt or my grandmother about her life story, but this was very surface level, and it left me wanting MORE.
3 1/2 stars rounded up. An oral memoir, dating I would guess from the late 40's/early 50's (shortly after WWII). It's too disjointed, but entertaining in spots. I don't really know much more about Baker than I did before reading it.
I first heard about Josephine Baker from a podcast about her amazing WWII efforts. This book did not go into that as much, but it was more her life as a whole. It was also her love story to France.
"Why can't people see that there's not enough kindness these days? Our world isn't so much in poor taste as entirely unacceptable. We can't carry on like this. I personally feel like I'm walking on shifting sands when I think about everything that needs to be put right, to be transformed with kindness."
First time in English, this was originally published in France in 1947. This book read like a conversation between this joyous, formidable woman and the reader.
I have read about Josephine Baker in several other books about flappers. As I work on my own novels set in the Jazz Age, understanding the flapper is essential. Being able to read about her experiences in her own words helps with that understanding. Baker however brings in a couple if unique experiences from the decade. She was a black woman who faced even more challenges than white flappers and she spent a lot of time in Paris. Prohibition was strictly an American vice but the treatment of women and of minorities was not. She was a revolutionary. Now I won’t pick apart the writing or her sometimes rambling as this was from her journals. She was writing her memories sometimes as they occurred and not seeking proper format for telling a story. It’s a bit more like a grandparent imparting what happened. It does not detract from what happened but sometimes you have to weed through parts to get to the really interesting bit. Still it opens up a unique perspective from the time period which I hope only enhances my own storytelling.
I didn't really know much about Josephine Baker, so I was pleased to be given the opportunity to read this book. She really was a fascinating character,and I would love to read a biography about her. This one is a memoir; she dictated it over a period of time to a journalist, and so it feels more like a conversation than anything else, this makes it a bit uneven in places. It often felt quite lacking, particularly the later chapter that dealt with WW2. I was really looking forward to learning more about her war work, but I didn't really feel that I had learnt anything much about it.
I am really pleased to have read it, and I would recommend anyone with any interest in her to do so, but I think it would work better along side a biography, which would give more detail.
*Many thanks to Netgally and the publishers for a copy in exchange for an honest opinion.*
Josephine Baker, the legendary dancer, singer, and spy, became a cultural icon after her move to Paris in the 1920s. In this memoir—originally published in French in 1949—Baker recounts some of the most memorable stories from her extraordinary life: growing up in St. Louis, performing as a teenage Broadway dancer, working with the French Resistance during World War II (for which she was awarded numerous medals and honors), and caring for her personal menagerie of wild animals. Of course, she also shares vivid memories from her time on stage and screen.
Told with striking candor and warmth, the stories feel as if Josephine is chatting with you over a cocktail or whispering between acts in her dressing room. The result is a humorous, intimate, and richly detailed portrait of one of the most remarkable figures of the 20th century.
If I could have dinner with ten people from any time in history, I would have Josephine Baker in my ten. She was ALIVE! The others? William Shakespeare, Ben Franklin, Rudolph II (Holy Roman Emperor), Christopher Hitchens, Cleopatra, Joseph Campbell, Hypatia of Alexandria, Marie Laveau, and Cicero.
If I could pick more guests I’d love to have Hank Williams, Ray Kurzweil, AOC, Salman Rushdie, Simon Kenton, Mikhail Gorbachev, Sarah Vowell, Walt Disney, Queen Sisi (Empress Elizabeth of Austria ), William Blake , Clarence Darrow, Anna Nicole Smith, David Hume, Sarah Silverman, James Randi, Norm MacDonald, Marlene Dietrich, Mary Magdalene, Nelson Mandela, and that girl I made out with after the 4th of July Parade in 9th grade.
So this is written as a conversation and not as a start to finish straight line of time. God though this woman LIVED and worked so hard through her whole life. She is very intelligent, generous and funny. This book is a statement of the times she lived in and there were moments where I had to stop and take a breather. She made me laugh a few times though sometimes she made me go " wait what?" I think that she would have been interesting person to talk to! The conversation where she was talking about singing to people in concentration camps will be in my mind for a while or coming to perform in segregated America. I'm glad to have read this though. It's always important to know history.
Josephine Baker was everything shy and quiet and I love it. I think because there were no cellphones and social media around during Baker’s era, I just assumed that many of the pioneers were timid, mindful and kept to themselves. Though there are many that were like that, there were also many who were not like that. Josephine traveled the world, met many people, danced on many stages, and lived many lives. It was refreshing to hear that the hardships was not always hard. There was some glory and happiness in the midst of the storm. Paris seemed like a perfect place for many black people during this time and I’m glad that Josephine was able to live her life happily there.
An amazing feat of primary source material but keep in mind this is translated from French which was not her first language and she had a 5th grade education. It's not one of the great literary works of our time but hearing people's stories in their own words will always hold a special place in my heart.