About:

Black Girl in Paris by Shay Youngblood is a coming of age novel. After reading about the author’s life this novel felt like perhaps a dramatized version of her life. The main character (Eden), like the author, is a writer, who moves to Paris to follow her creative dreams and like the author takes on odd jobs to make a living until she can hopefully make it big as a writer. We follow as Eden goes through the harsh realities of being in what’s supposed to be the Black creative mecca.

Review:

The backdrop of Black Girl in Paris by Shay Youngblood is Paris in the mid-1980s. When we are introduced to Eden, she seems like a naive but hopeful 20-something year old. She moves to Paris because all the great Black artists of the Harlem Renaissance that she looks up to moved there to thrive creatively. However, she moves to Paris with no money at all. A young Black Parisian girl takes her under her wing and she is saved momentarily.

From there Eden becomes a nanny and then engages in a few other questionable activities to make money. You can feel her desperation to live and eat and simply take care of herself through the pages. Eden meets several interesting characters throughout her time in Paris – and not all of them mean her well. She will not always navigate being introduced to these characters in the smartest way but she does always learn a lesson and shares it with us. You may read and want Eden to win as a fellow creative, you may want to see a dream realized. But internally you may also be screaming at her “Girl, does this make sense?” 

In true artist form you will read about Eden seemingly to fall in love multiple times for different reasons with men, women, and I would go so far as to say queer persons although the author does not specifically identify them as such. The author highlights love in several forms, the romantic sense as well as the community sense. The importance of having a home away from home – in a place, a person, a community is evident. It is often the life force that helps you keep going. In the variety of characters that we learn about you may find someone that is familiar to you – I know this was true for me as someone who lived abroad and lived in 3 different cities throughout my 20s.  

The author made stylistic choices to continue to bring to the forefront that this is Paris in the 80s and racism and terrorism is very much alive – no matter what the James Baldwins and the Josephine Bakers want you to believe about Paris, it is not perfect. In the end the harder Eden tries the more she seems to be set back, it is not until she finally lets go of all expectations that her dreams seem to come together. 

Read this story to get a healthy dose of what it means to be an artist with a mix of reality and romance.