>When i first moved to washington, dc, i got much grief from an armed
>police officer about taking out a stick of gum on the platform after
>i had de-boarded the train at the takoma park metro station. homey
>started to write a $250.00. i told a big ass lie about how i was new
>to the area completely homeless, penniless and living off of
>friends. At first he was not moved so i spent the next ten minutes
>brilliantly (if i may say so myself) embellishing the story until he
>was finally convinced to tear up the ticket, at which point i got a
>two minute lecture about laws that were designed to protect me!
>
>The other day in Paris, after a long flight, a hopped on the metro
>to to go home. i was hungry so i whipped out a sandwhich. i was in
>the middle of chowing down when a police office stepped onto the
>train. i forgot where i was for a moment and tried desperately to
>stuff the sandwich in the pouch of my backpack. i destroyed the
>sandwich in the effort and part of it ended up on the floor. i knew
>i was totally busted so i looked up at the officer with a smile,
>prepared to tell a big one. all he said was, "oh la, la, messr!
>allez s'il vous plait!" with a motion to clean up the little mess;
>it was not until he opened his mouth that i realized i was back in
>paris (where, of course, their petty fascism manifest itself in
>quite different ways).
Thanks for the revealing anecdotes. BTW, what are you doing in Paris? Are you a writer? A teacher? Or...? (Perhaps, you think my questions are rude; if so, ignore them. I'm just curious.) I myself have never been to Paris, France (not even to Paris, Texas, for that matter); perhaps it's better not to visit the city, so I can continue to daydream about it.
After 1953, Chester Himes lived in Europe. "I would sit in my room and become hysterical thinking about the wild, incredible story I was writing. But it was only for the French, I thought, and they would believe anything about Americans, black or white, if it was bad enough. And I thought I was writing realism. It never occurred to me that I was writing absurdity. Realism and absurdity are so similar in the lives of American blacks one cannot tell the difference" (Chester Himes, _My Life of Absurdity_, 1976). What would you say to Himes, if you could have a conversation with him?
Here's an interesting article on African-Americans in Paris: Tyler Stovall, "Harlem-sur-Seine: Building an African American Diasporic Community in Paris," _Stanford Electric Humanities Review_, 5.2 (1997), at <http://www.stanford.edu/group/SHR/5-2/stoval.html>. A little excerpt from the article:
***** ...Yet black American life in Saint-Germain-des-Prés consisted of more than just the circle around Richard Wright. The postwar era also saw the reintroduction of African American jazz to the French capital, and this distinctive musical form enjoyed more popularity there than ever. In particular Sidney Bechet, the New Orleans-born master of the soprano sax, enjoyed almost legendary popularity in the neighborhood's nightclubs until his death in 1959. Both Josephine Baker and Bricktop returned to Paris after the war, followed by other black women performers, including Eartha Kitt, Maya Angelou, Marpessa Dawn, Hazel Scott, and Nancy Holloway. Several visual artists, notably Herbert Gentry, Romare Bearden, Ed Clark, Barbara Chase-Riboud, and Beauford Delaney, settled in nearby Montparnasse. Members of these different black groups often interacted; in 1947, for example, Richard Wright introduced Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir to a jazz club owned by painter Herbert Gentry and featuring his wife, the singer Honey Johnson. Therefore, not only was the black community larger than before, but also more cohesive. At no time during the twentieth century have so many social networks united the African American inhabitants of the French capital.
At the same time, the contradictions surrounding the concept of black community appeared in sharpest relief during the two decades after the Second World War. Far from embracing the idea of an African American community in Paris, several of the leading expatriates denied its very existence. Shortly before his death in 1960 Richard Wright himself commented, "There is no Negro American colony. The Negroes associate with the French to avoid the white American colony." James Baldwin, who moved to Paris in 1948 and spent most of the next ten years there, echoed this sentiment when he wrote:
"only the Negro entertainers are able to maintain a useful and unquestioning comradeship with other Negroes. Their nonperforming, colored countrymen are, nearly to a man, incomparably more isolated, and it must be conceded that this isolation is deliberate."
Richard Wright essentially built the postwar black American community in Paris, and James Baldwin was one of its central figures, often borrowing money from fellow black expatriates when his own funds ran low. The disavowal of community ties by both individuals thus goes to the heart of the black expatriate experience in France.
No one expressed this paradox better than Art Simmons, jazz pianist and long-term performer at the Living Room, a nightclub off the Champs-Elysées. Simmons was a warm, gregarious individual who made the Living Room one of the key meeting places for African Americans in Paris. When he performed with the house band friends and associates would cluster around, including down and out individuals known as "Art's leeches" for their tendency to impose upon his generosity. By the late 1960s Simmons maintained an active address file of all the black expatriates in Paris, so those looking for acquaintances inevitably came to see him. Yet Art Simmons also questioned the idea of an African American community in the French capital. When interviewed in 1968, he stated:
"There is no Negro 'community' here as such. I don't know why....Just because we all know each other doesn't mean we're a community. I know many of the white Americans here too. But, at the same time, don't think we Negroes don't make it our business to know where we all are. I guess that's kind of a safety valve to have in case something goes wrong. After all, why do I buy Ebony Magazine over here? Because I want to know what my people are doing, that's why. I guess we are a community but not a visual community. We need each other -- and we call on each other. When we first come here, we're told to contact each other....I suppose there is a community! Even though we're all over town, we all know where to come to meet other Negroes...."
(footnotes omitted, Stovall, at <http://www.stanford.edu/group/SHR/5-2/stoval.html>) *****
Has your experience in any way been similar to theirs (the paradoxical dependence on & disavowal of community ties)?
And your relation to other black people (not just other African-Americans) in Paris?
Yoshie
P.S. Please reply only if you feel like it; I don't mean to create a chore by my questions.