Josephine Baker's Last Dance: The Story of A 20th Century African American Performer

I won Josephine Baker's Last Dance by Sherry Jones about two years ago through Goodreads Giveaways and I recently finished reading it.  Yes, I know.  I'm a disgrace.  It's just that I tend to prioritize blog tours because I need to post on a definite date. Then there's the authors, publishers and publicists who contact me directly about a book asking me to review it within a certain time frame.  Having a specific deadline works best for me.   Goodreads Giveaways don't even require reviews.  I still like to post reviews of those I won from that source when I have the time.  The last time I reviewed a Goodreads Giveaway win, it was 2019, and I reviewed it only on Goodreads. That's what I tend to do when the review is going to be relatively short, and I haven't been asked to review the book on a blog.

I've read three novels by Sherry Jones previously.  The first two were the books devoted to Mohammed's daughter, Aisha.  They were The Jewel of Medina and The Sword of Medina which I reviewed on Goodreads.  I participated in the blog tour for Jones' Heloise and Abelard novel, The Sharp Hook of Love. That post appeared on this blog here .   I didn't expect that it would take this long for a review of a  fourth Sherry Jones book to appear.

                                           

                              

I've never read a novel about Josephine Baker.  In fact, the only other one that I found online is a graphic novel that can be found on Goodreads  here.  So Josephine Baker is an unusual subject for a novel.  I had heard of her, and wanted to know more about her life.  That's the reason I entered the Goodreads giveaway.

 Although Josephine Baker was born in the U.S., as a Black woman she couldn't be a great star in  America during the first half of the 20th century, as she was in Paris.  This is why she lived in Paris for almost her entire adult life.  The French song that is most associated with her,  "J'ai Deux Amours" expressed her affection for her two loves, her country and Paris.  As a narrator, Sherry Jones commented that her country didn't love her back.  When she was in the U.S. , Josephine had to contend with race prejudice and segregation.   She wasn't immune to them because of her success in Paris.  She came back to the United States at one point with the purpose of organizing a campaign against segregation.  I had no idea that Josephine Baker had briefly been a civil rights activist during the 1950's.  I considered that aspect of her life, the biggest revelation in Josephine Baker's Last Dance.

I tried to understand Josephine Baker's orientation toward marriage. On the one hand, she seemed to believe that she ought to marry a man if she was in love with him.  This happened a number of times.  On the other hand, she didn't want a man to control her life.  Husbands and men who aspired to be her husband were likely to try to make decisions for her.  One man who wasn't legally married to her actually pulled off a masterful effort to keep Josephine under his thumb that I  thought was only possible for husbands.  I could only imagine that she was too involved in her career to notice what he had done.   I am happy to say that she extricated herself from that adverse situation without the help of a man. 

My only disappointment with this book is that Sherry Jones tantalized me with the idea of Josephine Baker as a pilot, but never gave me any more than two bare mentions of it.  I love reading about women in the history of aviation, and in fact woman pilots is a major focus of this blog.   So don't tell me that Josephine owned a plane and had flying skills, but never give me even one scene of her flying.  I felt deprived.   I would have given this book five stars on Goodreads if  there had been piloting sequences during the period of Josephine's life when I thought it most likely that this could have happened. 

I could have loved Josephine Baker's Last Dance, though I did like what we were given very much.  Josephine was really an extraordinary woman with great gifts that have lived on in the history of performing artists. Yet I did want to have more detail about her contributions in other areas.   Perhaps another author will one day write that Josephine Baker novel.  On that day, I will celebrate.

 

Gone To Soldiers: A Novelistic Journey Through World War II With Some Amazing Guides

I have loved Marge Piercy's poetry and her science fiction novel, Woman on the Edge of Time.  For me, she is a feminist icon.  When I received a request from the publisher to review the new e-book version of her 1987 novel Gone To Soldiers, I decided that it was time that I read it.   When I agreed to review this book, I had no idea of its length.  I remember marking it as currently reading on Goodreads, navigating to the book's page on the database and seeing 800 pages for the first time.  Those who are daunted by carrying around a print tome, may prefer to access Piercy's saga on their e-readers or tablets.  I know that I did.  Yet next time I will check the page count beforehand, so that I can give the publisher or author a more realistic time frame for when they can expect a review.  I received a free copy from the publisher via Net Galley in return for this honest review.

                                 

The title comes from the Pete Seeger protest song, Where Have All The Flowers Gone? .  The Wikipedia article that I've linked reveals that Seeger wrote it in 1955,  but it's inextricably linked with the 1960's anti-war movement.   So I expected that Piercy wouldn't have idealized WWII.  I imagined that her depiction of the war would be more ambivalent, and I wasn't wrong.   Readers can expect to find suffering, death and horror in Gone To Soldiers, but also compassion, bravery and triumph.

For Book Babe's readers, it's important to note that much of the narrative is a story about women, and some were extraordinary.   My personal favorites were Jacqueline, Bernice and Louise.

I'll start with Louise because Gone To Soldiers opens with her perspective. Originally, I wasn't impressed with her.  The multiplicity of her talents, her fortitude and resilience are gradually revealed over the course of the narrative.
As a journalist, Louise's travels bound the characters together.  Although Jacqueline and Bernice never met each other, Louise had the opportunity to interview both of them.

 Louise encountered Bernice first.   Bernice was a pilot, and eventually joined the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). Her entire life was focused on flying--getting an opportunity to fly, and then trying to find a way to keep flying.  Readers may be astonished by how far she was willing to go to continue being a pilot after the war was over.  Her refusal to ever give up on her dreams was what I admired most about her.  Longtime readers of this blog will know that the WASP has been a special focus of Book Babe, but there may be some of you who know little or nothing about them.  To learn more about the WASP,  I recommend The WASP Official Archive at Texas Women's University.

Jacqueline began as a sheltered Paris teenager who I found immensely irritating because of her complete lack of empathy.  The German occupation of France shattered her life and reshaped her personality.  The crucible of war and oppression accomplished the most marvelous metamorphosis for this character.  It also fundamentally changed her priorities and her loyalties.  I respected Bernice and Louise a great deal, but I came to love Jacqueline.  Her struggle to survive truly moved me.

My favorite male characters were Daniel and Bernice's brother, Jeff.   Daniel had a tremendous facility for languages and a preference for Asian cultures.  I found him unusual, and I learned a great deal from his experiences.  Jeff was an artist, but he desperately wanted to do something heroic so that his life would mean something.  I think that his life did mean something because he lived and loved with intensity, authenticity and a sense of commitment to everything he did.

The viewpoint characters in Gone To Soldiers illuminated a number of aspects of  the world they inhabited.  Even when I didn't particularly identify with a character, I felt that I understood more about each slice of the realities of WWII that these characters represented. It is often said that a novel is more than the sum of its parts, but I believe that it was the segments of individual perceptions that gave this book significance.