Awards

• Nominated for Bancroft Prize 2015
• Nominated for Francis Parkman Prize 2015
• Nominated for New-York Historical Society American History Book Prize 2014
• Nominated for Pulitzer Prizes 2015

Overview

Full Product Details

9780674047556

Table of Contents

Reviews

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 (04/01/2014)

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

Author Information

Matthew Pratt Guterl is Professor of Africana Studies and American Studies at Brown University.

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