I Always Knew: A Memoir

by Barbara Chase-Riboud

Overview

The extraordinary life story of the celebrated artist and writer, as told through four decades of intimate letters to her beloved mother

Barbara Chase-Riboud has led a remarkable life. After graduating from Yale’s School of Design and Architecture, she moved to Europe and spent decades traveling the world and living at the center of artistic, literary, and political circles. She became a renowned artist whose work is now in museum collections around the world. Later, she also became an award-winning poet and bestselling novelist. And along the way, she met many luminaries—from Henri Cartier-Bresson, Salvador Dalí, Alexander Calder, James Baldwin, and Mao Zedong to Toni Morrison, Pierre Cardin, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and Josephine Baker.

I Always Knew is an intimate and vivid portrait of Chase-Riboud’s life as told through the letters she wrote to her mother, Vivian Mae, between 1957 and 1991. In candid detail, Chase-Riboud tells her mother about her life in Europe, her work as an artist, her romances, and her journeys around the world, from Western and Eastern Europe to the Middle East, Africa, the Soviet Union, China, and Mongolia.

By turns brilliant and naïve, passionate and tender, poignant and funny, these letters show Chase-Riboud in the process of becoming who she is and who she might become. But what emerges most of all is the powerful story of a unique and remarkable relationship between a talented, ambitious, and courageous daughter and her adored mother.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691234274
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	10/04/2022
Pages:	480
Sales rank:	1,077,219
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Barbara Chase-Riboud is a visual artist and sculptor, novelist, and poet. She is the author of six novels, including Sally Hemings and The Great Mrs. Elias, and three poetry collections. She is the recipient of many awards and prizes, including the French Légion d’Honneur in 2022. She lives in Paris and Rome.

Hometown:

Paris, France

Date of Birth:

June 26, 1939

Place of Birth:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Education:

B.F.A. from Temple University; M.A. in art and architecture from Yale University

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“This book is a marvel. By turns witty and moving, and always keenly observed, Chase-Riboud’s letters to her mother span decades, continents, and cultures. From them emerges an unforgettable portrait of the artist as a woman and, just as crucially, as a daughter—her soul steeped in that rarest of elements: unconditional love.”—Caroline Weber, author of Proust’s Duchess and Queen of Fashion

“I Always Knew is an intimate and fascinating look at Barbara Chase-Riboud’s remarkable trajectory—from Philadelphia to Rome, London, Paris, Egypt, Russia, China, and Senegal—and her mindset during the last third of the twentieth century: a tumultuous, historically significant time for modern art and culture in the world.”—Richard J. Powell, author of Going There: Black Visual Satire

“I Always Knew combines memoir, travelogue, and history to create something entirely singular in contemporary literature. Immediate, poignant, and inspiring, Chase-Riboud’s letters to her mother are a gift from the past to be read with the urgency of the present.”—Christophe Cherix, Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings and Prints, The Museum of Modern Art

“Offering a new and unique method of connecting memoir, travelogue, letters, and contemporary art, I Always Knew is a series of dazzling biographical snapshots of pivotal periods in the life of the influential artist and writer Barbara Chase-Riboud.”—Deborah Willis, author of Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present

Editorial Reviews

"Remarkable. . . . In these memoirs, Chase-Riboud candidly and passionately describes her aspirations, her ambitions and creative inspiration, while also showcasing love and tenderness to her mother. Chase-Riboud is a pioneer."—-Hans Ulrich Obrist, CNN Style

"A fascinating portrait of the artist’s experience as a Black American woman living abroad at a time of marked racism, violence, and political tension, but also great cultural exchange and opportunity. . . . [I Always Knew] is a book about daily life. And of course, Chase-Riboud’s daily life is much more exciting than most."—-Lauren Moya Ford, Hyperallergic

"I Always Knew is the intimate, profound introduction to a life constantly driven by intelligence, creativity, restless at times, always thoughtful. . . . We cannot help but be amazed by the life of Chase-Riboud. . . . The book is the manifesto of [Chase-Riboud’s] ability to inspire us."—-Donatien Grau, The Brooklyn Rail

"[I Always Knew has] a remarkable openness, a sort of friendly affect that is irresistible."—-Carl Rollyson, New York Sun

"Barbara Chase-Riboud has lived the kind of life that could only be portrayed in a movie. Now, the story of her amazing life and art is recounted in [this] new book."—-Eugene Holley Jr., Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

"[In I Always Knew,] Chase-Riboud weaves celebrity encounters, political bombshells, and artistic trends into lively, chatty tales, preserving her experiences of climactic events and her devoted relationship with her witty, often acerbic mother."

Booklist starred review

2022-07-13
An acclaimed Black artist and writer’s memoir of her life and education, told in a series of letters to her mother.

While awaiting the results of the 2008 election—which yielded the first Black president, Barack Obama, a turn of history that in 1983 the author deemed “an impossibility”—Chase-Riboud (b. 1939) read through more than 600 letters that she had written to her mother from Europe between 1957 and 1991. Those letters mark her interesting journey from an ingénue who marveled at the groaning-board meals aboard the ocean liner to a world-renowned artist. Soon after her arrival, she wrote, “What about this Russian satellite? I didn’t know anything about it until it had circled the globe for about three days. America must be hysterical….Most of the French seem rather pleased. They really believe in this balance of power idea and they are just as afraid of the U.S. as they are of Russia.” It wasn’t long until Chase-Riboud, a graduate of Yale’s School of Design and Architecture, was showing her paintings and sculptures in galleries and competitions and beginning to travel around the world. In 1958, the Middle East director of the Coca-Cola Corporation asked, “what was a lone American girl doing wandering around the Middle East without guide or chaperone in the midst of the Suez Canal War?” The author’s travels took her to China, Mongolia, the Soviet Union, and elsewhere. At the same time, she was blossoming as a writer, and she went on to publish numerous books of poetry and fiction, closely observing the places she visited and sharing her enthusiasms and successes with her mother. “Our landscape really resembles a kind of 18th-century English landscape painting—flat, beautiful light dotted here and there with huge oak trees,” she exulted from a sojourn in the French countryside as she prepared to go to Senegal to exhibit her artwork.

A charming epistolary record of a life of art and discovery, well and fully lived.

Kirkus Reviews