Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Beautiful, vivacious, stylish, and free-spirited, Reynolds (1901-80) was asked about her racially ambiguous appearance so often that she came up with American cocktail to describe her red, white, and black legacy. A dancer, actor, psychologist, and teacher, Reynolds recorded this archly witty, sexually frank, nonchalantly confident, yet curiously humble memoir in the mid-1970s, and it is published now for the first time, thanks to its discovery by Cornell professor George Hutchinson. Reynolds jauntily describes her lively, privileged childhood in Chicago and Los Angeles among her extended multiracial family, which included her cousin, Langston Hughes. Stating that she always felt free to do exactly as I pleased, Reynolds appeared in The Thief of Bagdad with Douglas Fairbanks, moved to New York, absconded with her college tuition, and headed to Paris in 1928-- Away from the lynchings, away from the Negro problem. Dizzying tales of famous artists and writers, escapades and affairs, sojourns in Tangiers and London, and harrowing moments as WWII begins are punctuated by confrontations with prejudice and hate. Kudos to Hutchinson for bringing this independent and intrepid citizen of the world back to shimmer and shine among us, carrying forward her guiding passion to try to improve racial relationships, to get people of different nationalities, colors and religions to understand and appreciate each other. --Seaman, Donna Copyright 2014 Booklist
Choice Review
An actor and a model, writer, dancer, clinical psychologist, and college instructor, Reynolds was born at the turn of the 20th century and died in 1980. Hutchinson (Cornell Univ.) found her unpublished memoir, which she wrote with Miller (then a journalist, now at Mercy College), in a Howard University archive. Hutchinson and Miller here make it available, revealing the narrative of a complex African American woman (incidentally, cousin to Langston Hughes) and a product of the black bourgeoisie. She referred to herself as an "American cocktail" because of her mixed racial identity--her heritage was Native American, East Indian, Creole, and African American. Reynolds's memoir reveals the travails of an African American woman who was unafraid of the world and crossed boundaries in a way that was unimaginable at the time. She lived in Paris, Morocco, and London. She encountered political, literary, and artistic figures such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Claude McKay, Ernest Hemingway, Carl Van Vechten, James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, and Coco Chanel. A tapestry of historical moments combined with personal encounters, this book is for those interested 20th-century American and European history. An intriguing, exciting, fascinating read. --Charlene B. Regester, Univ. of North Carolina--Chapel Hill