Fearless and Free: A Memoir
It’s easy to say that Josephine Baker (1906–1975) was a one-of-a-kind personality. Those of us over a certain age may recall images of the iconic performer shimmying the Charleston wearing nothing but a skirt made out of bananas. Making cross-eyed faces at the audience, most of whom were never quite sure if what they were witnessing was humorous or scandalous, Josephine expressed a love and passion for out-of-the-box entertaining. Whether humor or scandal, one thing was certain, the world in the roaring ’20s had never seen anything like her before.
Born in 1906 in a low-income, mixed-race neighborhood of St. Louis, MO, Baker never knew the identity of her father. She lived a rough and tumble childhood, was often cold and hungry, and became a live-in domestic servant for a white family when she was just eight years old. By the age of 13 she had dropped out of school, had married and divorced, and was living in the slums, street dancing for money. Remarried at 15, she left her second husband when her performing career took a turn and she started getting more consistent work as a fresh 17-year-old chorus girl in vaudeville theaters in New York City.
Divorced again, Baker boldly set off for Paris, France at the age of 19 and never looked back. She was quickly cast in an all-Black talent show, "La Revue Negre,” and instantly became a hit. After only two years in Paris, Baker was already an international sensation, singing and dancing through 25 countries in Europe and the Americas. She caused quite a ruckus from city to city and often had to engage in pre-performances for the local censorship committees. Her charm endeared her to high-ranking officials and time and time again she was welcomed to extend her tours, becoming an honorary citizen everywhere she went.
During the war years, she was forced to flee France, yet she worked to the point of illness and exhaustion supporting the war effort to liberate France. France had been very very generous to her, she recognized, so she would be very very generous to France in return. Her cover as an entertainer gave her inroads to confidential and strategic conversations and she passed on critical intelligence throughout her tours.
Freed from the heaviness of racial prejudice in the United States, living in France was like a breath of fresh air for Baker. The feeling was mutual and over several decades, France made Baker a star, a star so beloved that she was the first Black woman inducted into France’s Panthéon in 2021. She is now laid to rest alongside dozens of French academic, military, political, and spiritual heroes including Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Emile Zola, and Marie Curie.
Fearless and Free is a riveting account of Baker’s life as told by Baker to Marcel Sauvage, a French journalist and writer, who started recording Baker’s stories in 1926, when she was 20 years old and just settling in to her Paris whirlwind lifestyle. Over the course of her career, Sauvage met with Baker as often as he could to document her impressions and experiences. Stories weave about with ease, meandering between poverty and celebrity, between personal and public life, between France and the world.
Her naturally gregarious love of people, of children, of animals, and especially her love of dance, lends itself to countless examples of the ways she aimed to make people feel good and be happy. In this confident and charismatic memoir, she further extends her outreach to the reader, elongating the waves of warm wellbeing in her wake.
With a little bit of everything included in her memoir, Baker remarks on favorite foods and recipes, experiences with segregation south of the Mason-Dixon line in 1948, her transition into cinema, her various marital escapades, and her observations on celebrity. As she consistently slants her stories with positivity and optimism, gratitude and humility, it is also clear that nothing could have kept Baker from experiencing her life to the fullest. In hearing her stream of consciousness thoughts and perspectives, the reader will come away with a sense that they have just read a diary of a dear friend who is modeling the path to being unapologetically themselves, leading a life of adventure and fulfillment. The reader is sure to be encouraged to follow Baker’s lead and dive headfirst into their own one-of-a-kind future, fearless and free.