Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis (2012) is the triple memoir of three iconic American women during their one year as a student in Paris – all in their 20s, before they knew their career pathways, before they became public figures. In Paris they were young and virtually unknown – they could be themselves.
The years span 1949-1964. The college years are spent with a large group of other college girls, under the supervision of the host college and host families, or on their own initiative – but in different times in French history and social norms.
Kaplan begins with Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy’s 1949-1950 junior college year in Paris and Grenoble. Susan Sontag was in Paris in 1957-1958, and Angela Davis from 1963-1964: ‘If you reduce them to identity labels, they are the soul of diversity: a Catholic debutante (with upper-class connections), a Jewish intellectual (with European opinions), an African-American revolutionary (with a sense of justice and fearlessness), from the East Coast, the West Coast, and the South.’
For 20-year-old Jackie Bouvier (1929-1994), Paris was physically challenging (the wretched toilets and lack of toilet paper), but culturally rich. After the war years, and with little communication with family back in America (letters were sent by ship), she could read French literature, expand her knowledge of art history, attend the theatre, go to nightclubs, set her own rituals, and begin to explore romance. What aspects of Paris would influence her when she married John F Kennedy in 1953 – and became First Lady in 1961?
For 24-year-old Susan Sontag (1933-2004) on a university fellowship, Paris was cheap hotels and smokey cafes, as she left her husband and five-year-old son. In the time of France’s crisis durring Algeria’s struggle for independence, and an explosion of cinemas, she could explore her own sexual freedom and discovery, and attend Simone de Beauvoir’s lectures. What inspirations does Sontag include in her writing, films, and political activism post-Paris?
Nineteen-year-old Angela Davis (1944-), with two other students staying with a host family in Paris, sought intellectual sophistication after ‘lifelong exclusion from civil society’ in her hometown of Alabama. It was the time of racial diversity in Paris with the arrival of workers from Mali, Senegal, and Mauritania – and many other immigrants. It was also the politically-charged 1960s and the assassination of President John F Kennedy. How does her year in Paris affect her view of civil rights as she rises to prominence in counterculture activism and becomes the leader of the Black Panther Party?
Kaplan focuses on how the college year transformed the lives of Jacqueline Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis. From the single year in Paris, the City of Light, to their lives back in America – Kaplan continues post-Paris to describe its influence on the rest of their lives, hopes and ambitions: intellectually, socially, culturally, politically, and independently.
Does Kaplan draw a tenuous line from Paris to post-Paris? Did one year in Paris when in their 20s really change ‘their relationship to their bodies, to their words?’
What is known is their ongoing relationship with France, to the arts, and to ‘liberty, egality, fraternity.’ They were loyal to Paris, and Paris remained loyal to them. Readers can draw their own conclusions through Kaplan’s final chapter in this excellent, thought-provoking and unique biography.
MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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