Matthew Pratt Guterl is Professor of Africana Studies and American Studies at Brown University.
Matthew Guterl's astonishing Josephine Baker and the
Rainbow Tribe tells the wholly unsuspected life-story of one of
the twentieth-century's most amazing visionaries. It is an
engrossing biography of an extraordinary woman. -- David Levering
Lewis, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning W. E. B. Du Bois,
1868-1919 and W. E. B. Du Bois, 1919-1963
A few pages into the finely worded, deeply evocative prologue,
Guterl asks readers to set aside everything they know about
Josephine Baker--but it's too late, for Guterl has already begun
what almost seems a fabulous fairy tale, one commandingly,
colorfully told by a masterful contemporary storyteller. Rarely
does an author's voice come across as audibly as Guterl's, in
cadence and sometimes in directives to the reader, and the effect
is enchanting--Baker's story, even more so. Years after
chanteuse-dancer Baker's soaring star fell, she rose once more,
this time as a relentless civil rights advocate and the adoptive
mother of 12 multiracial children, the 'Rainbow Tribe,' whom she
then raised and paraded in a theme-park-type castle, Les Milandes,
in the French countryside. Here, Guterl winnows out a truth from
the many fragments (in biographies, in the press, from the children
themselves), positing that 'it was an inspirational, exaggerated
symbol of what was possible at the extreme end of wealth and fame,
globally speaking, for anyone and everyone, no matter their skin
tone or racial classification.' A fascinating book about a
magnificent woman. -- Eloise Kinney * Booklist *
This book shimmers. The prose is spun gold, the ideas sparkle with
intelligence, and the fun's as high as Josephine Baker--topless in
a banana skirt, her caramel skin gleaming --can take it. But in the
end, it's a tragedy...Baker bought a French castle, adopted a dozen
children, and made them stand for every race and nation in the
world. It went about as well as any other supersized celebrity
adoption with a political agenda. But instead of reducing it to
farce, Guterl shows us what it all meant...He weaves in new
ways to think about identity, success, family, race, celebrity, and
Baker herself. -- Jeannette Cooperman * St. Louis Magazine *
The persona with which Baker (1906-75) captivated the world had
already been retooled once by her manager Giuseppe Pepito Abatino.
Following World War II, Baker transformed herself again, this time
into a universal mother presiding over a dozen children of every
race on permanent display at her castle in France's Dordogne...This
work will be enjoyed by all readers. -- Jenny Brewer * Library
Journal *
Guterl is astute about the contradictions in Baker's
experiment and her celebrity, both of which rested on her capacity
for reinvention. * New Yorker *
Astute and readable...In many ways, this is cultural studies at its
best. -- Steven Carroll * Sydney Morning Herald *
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