Josephine teaches her dolls to dance in time for their Christmas party.

Creating a sensation with her risqué nightclub act and strolls down the Champs Elysées, pet cheetah in tow, Josephine Baker lives on in popular memory as the banana-skirted siren of Jazz Age Paris. In Josephine Baker and the Rainbow Tribe, Matthew Pratt Guterl brings out a little known side of the celebrated personality, showing how her ambitions of later years were even more daring and subversive than the youthful exploits that made her the first African American superstar. Her performing days numbered, Baker settled down in a sixteenth-century chateau she named Les Milandes, in the south of France. Then, in 1953, she did something completely unexpected and, in the context of racially sensitive times, outrageous. Adopting twelve children from around the globe, she transformed her estate into a theme park, complete with rides, hotels, a collective farm, and singing and dancing. The main attraction was her Rainbow Tribe, the family of the future, which showcased children of all skin colors, nations, and religions living together in harmony. Les Milandes attracted an adoring public eager to spend money on a utopian vision, and to worship at the feet of Josephine, mother of the world. Alerting readers to some of the contradictions at the heart of the Rainbow Tribe project—its undertow of child exploitation and megalomania in particular—Guterl concludes that Baker was a serious and determined activist who believed she could make a positive difference by creating a family out of the troublesome material of race.

This revelatory biography of Folies Bergere dancer Josephine Baker (1906-1975) is a study of struggle, truimph and tragedy.

They were children who had seen too much Youll be dead before youre five, those were the first words Joyce Ann could remember her grandmother saying to her and the fact that she was almost nine did not make living any easier Joyce Ann, Josephine, Kenny, and Janie-all the children had seen too much, been through too much, dealt with too many grown-up things to be considered children in more than age. Josephine spent her days fighting to protect herself and her siblings from bigger kids who saw the undersized children of a woman barely more than four feet tall as fair game Janies days were spent cooking and caring for nine younger siblings and sleepless nights were spent wondering when rather than if one of her mothers numerous male visitors would decide to do the unimaginable Kennys secrets were kept from even his closest friends. How could a child explain life with a mother who managed every detail of every day of his life from what he would wear to lessons that were not always about music It was only the promise of friendship that brought these four young people together in a story about the power of love and acceptance among friends.