American Cocktail: A "Colored Girl" in the World - Rilegato

Reynolds, Anita

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0674073053 ISBN 13: 9780674073050

Casa editrice: Harvard Univ Pr, 2014

Riassunto

This is the rollicking, never-before-published memoir of a fascinating woman with an uncanny knack for being in the right place in the most interesting times. Of racially mixed heritage, Anita Reynolds was proudly African American but often passed for Indian, Mexican, or Creole. Actress, dancer, model, literary critic, psychologist, but above all free-spirited provocateur, she was, as her Parisian friends nicknamed her, an "American cocktail."

One of the first black stars of the silent era, she appeared in Hollywood movies with Rudolph Valentino, attended Charlie Chaplin's anarchist meetings, and studied dance with Ruth St. Denis. She moved to New York in the 1920s and made a splash with both Harlem Renaissance elites and Greenwich Village bohemians. An émigré in Paris, she fell in with the Left Bankavant garde, befriending Antonin Artaud, Man Ray, and Pablo Picasso. Next, she took up residence as a journalist in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War and witnessed firsthand the growing menace of fascism. In 1940, as the Nazi panzers closed in on Paris, Reynolds spent the final days before the French capitulation as a Red Cross nurse, afterward making a mad dash for Lisbon to escape on the last ship departing Europe.

In prose that perfectly captures the globetrotting nonchalance of its author, American Cocktail presents a stimulating, unforgettable self-portrait of a truly extraordinary woman.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

Reynolds s memoir of her adventures in 1930s Paris and Europe, before World War II drove her back to the United States, was written in the 1970s but was never published. After a brief silent movie career and an uptown/downtown period hobnobbing with Harlem s intelligentsia as well as Greenwich Village s bohemians, the racially mixed author decamped to Europe at just the right time to meet such luminaries as Man Ray, Antonin Artaud, Louise Bryant, and many others. She lived the Left Bank life, with many forays into respectability (or something like it), traveling between the two worlds effortlessly Her lavish descriptions of the clothes she wore, the men she loved, and the places where she dined and danced enchant, and her frank discussion of sex is refreshing. Hutchinson s detailed chapter notes provide invaluable biographical and cultural info This title is essential for those who enjoy reading about the African American expat experience, as well as fans of Paris memoirs. --Liz French "Library Journal "

American Cocktail is a welcome addition to the sparse collection of twentieth-century memoirs written by African-American women. While it certainly allows a view of international modernism, and of racial passing, from a unique angle , as Hutchinson claims, and while the detailed notations will serve scholars well, the charm of the book lies precisely in Anita Reynolds s refusal to be drawn on anything but the finer things in life. --Times Literary Supplement

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Harvard Univ Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0674073053
• ISBN 13: 9780674073050
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 333
• Redattore: Hutchinson George