Josephine Baker Published Her Memoir in the 1940s. Now, It Arrives in the U.S. for the First Time

In 1926, Josephine Baker was approached by French journalist Marcel Sauvage about writing a memoir. Then 20 years old, the stage and screen performer thought it was a hilarious prospect, until she suggested telling her life’s stories to Sauvage, so he could write them down instead.

Their conversations over the next two decades culminated into the book Fearless and Free, first published in 1949. Now, the memoir has been translated from the French by Anam Zafar and Sophie Lewis, and arrives in the United States for the first time on Feb. 4 — bringing Baker’s story to a whole new audience.

Born in St. Louis, Mo. on June 3, 1906, Baker, whose real name was Freda Josephine McDonald, began performing at a young age. As a teenager, she moved to New York City and performed at the Plantation Club during the Harlem Renaissance. In 1925, Baker traveled to Paris, where she danced in the musical La Revue Nègre. She quickly gained recognition as a prominent entertainer within the city, and moved there, becoming a French citizen in 1937.

Ijeoma Oluo, author of So You Want to Talk About Race, wrote the foreword to Fearless and Free, and tells PEOPLE that she saw Baker’s lasting impact on her adopted city up close while visiting Paris herself.

“You see a lot of things named after her,” Oluo says. “You see places that she was at [and] places that she performed really memorialized. It's definitely something that, as you move through Paris, you're very aware of.”

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Fearless and Free recounts the trajectory of Baker’s career, in her own words. In addition to her live shows, she starred in movies like 1927's La Sirène des Tropiques and 1934's Zouzou, and became the first Black woman to be cast as the lead actress in a feature film.

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Her performances, with their risqué dance moves, were also deemed scandalous by many. Baker noted how she was perceived, both by certain audiences she appeared for, and others she interacted with throughout her life.

"People think I’ve come straight out of the wilderness," Baker said. "I believe that in certain areas of the Netherlands — and the other countries I visited — people would have happily fed me ground glass. Primitive instincts, of course, folly of the flesh, chaos of the senses, frenzied animality — was this all they could say?"

The memoir also recounts memories of her husband, the French composer Jo Bouillon who she divorced in 1961, and the artists with whom she was acquainted, like the writer Colette and opera singer Edith Piaf.

“For someone who was being observed so intently her entire life, and was this worldwide celebrity, I think a lot of times we don't understand that often the people we observe, are observing us in turn,” Oluo says.

“Being an observational person doesn't mean that she has a perfect political history or a perfect political knowledge to fully be able to put into context what she's witnessing,” the writer adds. “It's really easy for people to talk about what they observe in a way that isn't the complete picture. It may be accurate to what they're seeing, but it's not accurate to all that's happening.”

As such, Baker occasionally uses “outdated language and depictions,” of marginalized groups, per the book. Certain terms were preserved for readers to “consider the full work in its historical and social context.”

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Fearless and Free also explores another crucial aspect of Baker’s legacy: her political and civil rights advocacy. The performer served as a spy for the French Resistance at the start of World War II, during which she gathered intel on the movement of German troops. She also housed refugees fleeing the Nazis at her chateau in Southern France and raised funds for poor citizens in Paris. Baker was an outspoken critic of the racism she witnessed in the U.S., both in childhood and while living abroad.

“You’ve really got to have courage to speak out about things, in the hope that people — who, you pray from the bottom of your heart, will never be victims again — will open their eyes, open them first to themselves, and understand, improve themselves, finally change things," Baker said.

Much of her work still resonates today.

“For many in Black America, these are tough times,” Oluo says. “And I think it is really, really important that we remember, not only that we've seen tough times before, but that we have found a way to live and thrive through those times.”

“Josephine Baker was not just a woman who became a Black worldwide celebrity. She was a woman who survived the post-reconstruction herself. [She became] a worldwide celebrity and still faced brutal racism whenever she returned to the U.S. and still fought and still lived and still insisted on joy in her life.”

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That joy shines through in Baker’s sense of humor, often found in her comments on the absurdities she encountered, like the resistance to the many beloved pets, from mice to monkeys, she took with her on her travels.

"This little group was so happy at the Hôtel de Noailles! And I was too! " Baker recalled of taking her "dear animals" on a trip. "Bonzo [the Great Dane] lying on the hotel room rug with a mouse cleaning itself on the end of his nose; Gugusse [the marmoset] on a visit to the wardrobe; Glouglou [the monkey] in the curtains, climbing with his little hands ... It was a big adventure for them, too."

“The thought of her smuggling puppies in her coat across the border, it just cracks me up hilariously,” Oluo says. “I love those little anecdotes of where you could tell that, in all aspects of life, she tried to live according to what she wanted.”

Baker did just that. She adopted 12 children, from various racial and religious backgrounds, due to her belief in equality, and referred to their family as “The Rainbow Tribe.” She also performed right up until her death in 1975 at age 68.

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As readers learn more about the beloved icon's life, Oluo hopes that they will take her in as the multifaceted person she was.

“I encourage people to sit with every part of her story, even parts that may make them uncomfortable, and recognize the wholeness and fullness of her and the fullness that we all contain,” Oluo says.

Fearless and Free will be published via Tiny Reparations Books on Feb. 4 and is now available for preorder, wherever books are sold.

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