Dance of Resistance: The Josephine Baker Story

This is the story of a remarkable life, taking one girl from her 1906 birth in St Louis, through a childhood characterised by abuse and poverty, to achieving her performing dreams in Philadelphia, New York City and Paris, taking on fearless WW2 espionage in France, and a lifelong fight for equal rights in the USA, until her death in 1975. But it is also a remarkable feat of storytelling, to compress all of that into just over 100 pages of accessible text and still capture a vivid, individual, first person voice. Catherine Johnson has proven her ability to breathe life into biographies, winning the Young Quills Award for Historical Fiction, and she tells us she had ‘always wanted to write about Josephine Baker’ because this was someone who used her fame ‘to fight for freedom and fairness’. It must have been quite a challenge to authentically represent the discrimination and abuse faced by Black people in early 20th century USA, and the trauma that Josephine suffered growing up, in an age appropriate way. Even so there are one or two episodes that whilst not explicit or dwelled upon, do make this more suitable for older readers. What is wonderfully captured is Josephine’s indomitable spirit and her passion for dancing and entertaining an audience, her pride in being able to earn real wealth and prestige and her strong belief that she deserves respect and equality. I think it will be eye opening for many young readers to realise what it meant for her to arrive in France, where the treatment of Black people truly embraced the principles of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, in total contrast to the racism she had encountered at home, and why she was so determined to fight for her adopted country in WW2. This earned her the highest honour of the Légion d’honneur and a final resting place in The Panthéon in Paris, one of only six women to be honoured there. Her iconic life provides a fascinating insight into so many important periods of the 20^th Century social history and is an inspirational story of self-determination and courage that is bound to impact young readers.