{"id":26662,"date":"2022-10-10T08:00:55","date_gmt":"2022-10-10T08:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=26662"},"modified":"2022-10-07T16:59:23","modified_gmt":"2022-10-07T16:59:23","slug":"josephine-baker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2022\/10\/10\/josephine-baker\/","title":{"rendered":"Josephine Baker"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" \"\"
\nBy Catel & Bocquet<\/strong>, translated by Edward Gauvin<\/strong> (SelfMadeHero)
\nISBN: 978-1-91059-329-5 (TPB\/Digital edition)<\/p>\n

Win\u2019s Christmas Gift Recommendation: The Story of an Actual Wonder Woman\u2026 9\/10<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a rather short review of an astonishingly eventful life celebrated in a superbly expansive, compellingly detailed account from two of the best graphic biographers working in the field. As I\u2019m always implying, my Less is your More, and this is one story you\u2019ll want to appreciate fresh and full-on, so just buy it and be done. You won\u2019t be sorry and will have a revelatory time\u2026<\/p>\n

Born Freda Josephine McDonald<\/em> on June 3rd<\/sup> 1906 in St Louis, Missouri, the black icon, free spirit and symbol of self-determination who called herself Jos\u00e9phine Baker<\/strong><\/em> was no scholar or schemer, but used her innate gifts as a dancer and entertainer to survive horrific acts of random racist violence and ultimately escape her origins as a despised second class citizen in the land of her birth.<\/p>\n

A forceful, irrepressible, warm-hearted optimist with colossal empathy and a relentless sense of humour, Baker\u2019s drive and willingness to take chances carried her to the peak of European sophistication and culture: rubbing shoulders with royalty and the cream of global creative intelligentsia: everyone from Picasso and Man Ray to Le Corbusier and Hemingway, Max Reinhardt, Bu\u00f1uel, Cocteau, Colette, Pirandello, Georges Simenon and so many glittering others.<\/p>\n

She was a vedette, singer, dancer, actress, movie star, civil rights activist, paramount artistic inspiration and – during WWII – an actual spy and French resistance operative working for future President Charles de Gaulle, as well as a ferocious defender of animals and devoted mother. Above all else, she was an entertainer par excellence\u2026<\/p>\n

Here, Baker\u2019s incredibly eventful life is traced from cradle to grave in black-&-white vignettes, concentrating on her achievements, family life and relationships, seen through her progress from exploitable bit player to media sensation \u201cLa Baker\u201d: Queen of Paris in the Jazz Age.<\/p>\n

Her astounding energy, creativity and resolve to succeed was only exceeded by her adoration of children, secret acts of charity and unfailing ability to love men who were bad for her, but her legacy was almost erased in the years after she stopped working. Countless comeback attempts and financial troubles followed.<\/p>\n

Perhaps she was never truly in earnest but pursuing the means to a greater end. Due to her inability to have children and immense fellow feeling for the downtrodden, Josephine had turned her post war years into an incredible social experiment, gathering orphans from many devastated countries into a single loving family\u2026 her multinational, multi-ethnic Rainbow Tribe<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n

All that achievement, accomplishment, unprofitable charity, disillusionment and ultimate abandonment by the august and wealthy in her own country (both of them!) led to Josephine fading from history until relatively recent times, but now she is being reclaimed by a world which could really benefit from her example\u2026<\/p>\n

Baker\u2019s international fame led to frequent and painful attempts to reclaim her birth nation\u2019s attention. Eventually – in 1937 – she renounced her American citizenship to become officially French. In later years she tried to help America\u2019s fight against Segregation, but was shunned by both side of that struggle. At the end, as economic woes, life and ongoing illness plagued her final years, she found a few unexpected friends in powerful women like Brigitte Bardot and her final years were spent in Monaco, a guest of equally constrained and misused female icon Grace Kelly<\/em>. Josephine Baker died on 11th<\/sup> April 1975.<\/p>\n

Her public and private lives coalesce in this chronological dramatised narrative from award-winning graphic novelist Catel Muller (Ainsi soit Beno\u00eete Groult<\/strong><\/em>, Adieu Kharkov<\/strong><\/em>, Lucie s\u2019en soucie<\/strong><\/em>, Le Sang des Valentines<\/strong><\/em>) and crime novelist, screenwriter\/biographer\/comics writer Jos\u00e9-Louis Bocquet (M\u00e9tal Hurlant<\/em><\/strong>, Sur la ligne blanche<\/strong><\/em>, M\u00e9moires de l\u2019espion<\/strong><\/em>, Panzer Panik<\/strong><\/em>, Anton Six<\/strong><\/em>), who in their other collaborations have also explored the lives of Kiki de Montparnasse<\/strong><\/em> and Olympe de Gouges<\/strong><\/em> (\u2026and we\u2019ll get to them in the fullness of time).<\/p>\n

Entertaining, enthralling, informative, and continually sparking explosions of aggrieved but justified outrage on Baker\u2019s behalf, the book is supplemented by a vast supporting structure of extras, beginning with a heavily illustrated and highly informative \u2018Timeline for Josephine Baker\u2019<\/em>, incorporating pivotal events in her public and private lives. It\u2019s further augmented by \u2018Biographical Notes\u2019<\/em>: 55 character portraits in prose and sketch form of the historical figures with supporting roles feature in this epic saga, plus as an essay on \u2018The Rainbow Tribe\u2019<\/em> by her son\/historical consultant Jean-Claude Bouillon-Baker. Also included are a Bibliography and Filmography for further study.<\/p>\n

If you love history, comics, justice triumphant or just great stories, you really need to set some records straight and read this book.
\n\u00a9 Casterman 2021. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Catel & Bocquet, translated by Edward Gauvin (SelfMadeHero) ISBN: 978-1-91059-329-5 (TPB\/Digital edition) Win\u2019s Christmas Gift Recommendation: The Story of an Actual Wonder Woman\u2026 9\/10 Here\u2019s a rather short review of an astonishingly eventful life celebrated in a superbly expansive, compellingly detailed account from two of the best graphic biographers working in the field. As … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Josephine Baker”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[115,119,63,122,170],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biography","category-comicsacademic","category-european-classics","category-historical","category-non-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-6W2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26662"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26665,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26662\/revisions\/26665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}