I Always Knew: A Memoir

by Barbara Chase-Riboud

The extraordinary life story of the celebrated artist and writer, as told through four decades of intimate letters to her beloved mother

Barbara Chase-Riboud has led a remarkable life. After graduating from Yale’s School of Design and Architecture, she moved to Europe and spent decades traveling the world and living at the center of artistic, literary, and political circles. She became a renowned artist whose work is now in museum collections around the world. Later, she also became an award-winning poet and bestselling novelist. And along the way, she met many luminaries―from Henri Cartier-Bresson, Salvador Dalí, Alexander Calder, James Baldwin, and Mao Zedong to Toni Morrison, Pierre Cardin, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and Josephine Baker.

I Always Knew is an intimate and vivid portrait of Chase-Riboud’s life as told through the letters she wrote to her mother, Vivian Mae, between 1957 and 1991. In candid detail, Chase-Riboud tells her mother about her life in Europe, her work as an artist, her romances, and her journeys around the world, from Western and Eastern Europe to the Middle East, Africa, the Soviet Union, China, and Mongolia.

By turns brilliant and naïve, passionate and tender, poignant and funny, these letters show Chase-Riboud in the process of becoming who she is and who she might become. But what emerges most of all is the powerful story of a unique and remarkable relationship between a talented, ambitious, and courageous daughter and her adored mother.

Genres: Memoir, Biography Memoir, Biography, Essays, Nonfiction

480 pages, Hardcover

Published October 4, 2022

About the author

An American novelist, poet, sculptor and visual artist, perhaps best known for her historical fiction. Much of her work has explored themes related to slavery and exploitation of women.

Chase-Riboud attained international recognition with the publication of her first novel, Sally Hemings, in 1979. The novel has been described as the "first full blown imagining" of Hemings' life as a slave and her relationship with Jefferson.[1] In addition to stimulating considerable controversy, the book earned Chase-Riboud the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for the best novel written by an American woman and sold more than one million copies in hardcover.[2] She has received numerous honors for her work, including the Carl Sandburg Prize for poetry and the Women's Caucus for Art's lifetime achievement award.[1] In 1965, she became the first American woman to visit the People's Republic of China after the revolution.[3] In 1996, she was knighted by the French Government and received the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.[4] She divides her time between Paris and Rome.

The only child of Vivian May Chase, a histology technician and Charles Edward Chase, a contractor.[5] Chase-Riboud displayed an early talent for the arts and began attending the Fleisher Art Memorial School at the age of 8. She also excelled as an art student at the Philadelphia High School for Girls (now combined with Central High School). Between 1947 and 1954, she continued her training at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art and won an award from Seventeen for one of her prints, which was subsequently purchased by the Museum of Modern Art.[5] Chase-Riboud went on to receive a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Tyler School at Temple University in 1957. In that same year, she won a John Hay Whitney fellowship to study at the American Academy in Rome for 12 months. There, she created her first bronze sculptures and exhibited her work at the Spoleto Festival in 1957, as well as at the American Academy and the Gallery L'Obeliso the following year.[6] During this time, she traveled to Egypt, where she discovered non-European art.[6] In 1960, Chase-Riboud completed a Master of Fine Arts from Yale University.

After completing her studies, Chase-Riboud moved to Paris.

Reviews

[Pippa GSD · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a long book. Stick with it. Lean hard on the essays that introduce each year. And absolutely, read through the end, to spend a lifetime with and learn about an amazing woman and artist. Much of what you'll learn will come through inference and implication. There are 30 years of surface-level letters to a much-beloved mother. We never hear anyone's voice but Barbara's (with a couple brief notable exceptions). But she tells all in the end, using something of a magician's skill with indirection.

The letters start when this young woman is 18, in 1957. They overflow with clothes, parties, fashion, celebrity, men, marriage, looks, family, home decor. And a graduate degree at Yale's School of Architecture and Design before she's 22. But as she travels and dances, goes out in society and maintains an active correspondence, the writer is also creating art: substantial drawings, stupendous sculptures, inventive and gorgeously written poetry and novels. She doesn't talk much about her art; she makes it. This is memoir, but not of a kind being written by anybody else.

The photo plates are beautiful and impressive. The essays and a couple poems are extraordinary. The text of a 1988 speech is astonishing and timeless.

Ask yourself at the end what she always knew. And why we didn't.

[Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chase-Riboud is eighteen years old when she leaves the United States for Europe. She begins writing letters to her mother, updates on the day, the week, the month. In life, every letter was answered, but as the reader you experience only Chase-Riboud’s singular worldview as it unfolds over four decades. You become immersed in the mundane, and yet you emerge with a deep understanding of this visionary artist’s adult life, alongside the realization that through regular writing, anyone can preserve the glorious, intimate details of their own existence.

Not all of the details in this memoir are small. For armchair travelers, the letters move through France, Egypt, China, the Soviet Union, and the Middle East, seen through the eyes of an artist who sought inspiration through experience. It is a life lived fully, because if not, why pretend to live at all? These are the kinds of stories we are accustomed to reading about male artists, writers, and poets, stories we devour without question. Female artists often have more constrained narratives. Chase-Riboud is a glorious exception, offering the kind of origin story we crave about the making of a creative life.

While the chance encounters, expatriate freedom, and rhythms of an artist’s life provide the glamour, the true beauty lies in the portrait of not just an artist, but a mother, a daughter, and a partner. The father of her two sons is Marc Riboud, the photographer, and she writes candidly about the difficulty of raising a family while protecting the space to create, especially when both parents are artists. In these reflections on motherhood, marriage, and the need for solitude, you feel the impenetrable closeness between mother and daughter.

As the years pass, the letters never lose their sense of joy. You watch a woman find herself again and again in the beauty of the world, knowing exactly who she is, and repeating that truth to the only person who could know her better than she knows herself, her mother.

[Valerie Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I Always Knew" by Barbara Chase-Riboud is a captivating exploration of the artist's journey, skillfully chronicling her development as a creative force. The book offers readers a unique glimpse into the intricate tapestry of her life through a collection of letters addressed to her mother. Her talent as a writer, vibrant personality and joie de vivre is reflected in her letters, which chronicle the various stages of Chase-Riboud's life, providing an intimate perspective on her growth as an artist, wife, mother, and activist.

One of the highlights of the book is its vivid portrayal of her experiences while traveling, studying, and living abroad - London, Paris, Egypt, China and more. The narrative beautifully weaves together the personal and professional aspects of her life, allowing readers to connect with the artist on a deeper level. A delightful surprise for me was the realization that the sculpture at Wheaton Plaza, a place frequented during my childhood, was Chase-Riboud's inaugural public art installation. This revelation, combined with my visits to the artist's exhibitions over the years at the African-American Museum in Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and, more recently, Hauser & Wirth, made this a very personal and insipring reading experience.

Barbara Chase-Riboud is a prolific artist and her story, chronicled in this book, showcases not only her talents and gifts, but the transformative power of passion, dedication, and creativity.

[CAROLYN G WYNN · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely book. Fascinating look into the life a brilliant artist. From the way the book is set up as a series of letters between her mother and herself, to the content it is a beautiful love story spanning decades. The biography not only teaches you about this magnificent artist, but it gives you a look in the life of an African-American woman that you don't often get to see, one of ease, art, autonomy and living life. In addition to being an award winning and accomplished sculptor, she authored several books. Without literary research and work the stories of Sally Hemmings and Amistad would still exist in the shadows. There is a fascinating relationship between her and Jackie O' and the last two chapters are as relevant and a reminder that culture and art are a form of resistance. It is a longer read/listen and is slow in some moments, but is so worth it.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting woman of many talents. Letters to her mother over the years. Somewhat repetitive.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

These letters are very dense, but personal letters have a way of involving the reader so intimately that I enjoyed it all.

[Auriea · Rating 5 out of 5]

She's unbelievably amazing. She always knew. <3

[Connie Kronlokken]

Fun to live with this story over a period of time. A remarkable story.