Book Review: “Fearless and Free: A Memoir” by Josephine Baker, translated by Anam Zafar and Sophie Lewis, foreword by Ijeoma Oluo

By Terri Schlichenmeyer   You march to the tune of your own drummer because you like the beat.  It’s the same cadence you carry in your heart and soul, and it sets your pace and your path. No one else’s pulse matches yours, no one else’s rhythm will do. You march to your own drummer and as in the new memoir, “Fearless and Free” by Josephine Baker, translated from the French by Anam Zafar and Sophie Lewis, you dance to it, too.  When he first met Josephine Baker in 1926, journalist Marcel Sauvage suggested that she might want to write her memoir, and the 20-year-old Baker laughed at his idea. Later that year, when he sat down to hear her story, he learned that Baker was prone to laughter.  She was born into poverty in 1906 in St. Louis, and she told Sauvage that she began dancing to keep warm. She grew to love being a performer, but earning money was more important, so Baker left school at age eight to work. For the rest of her life, she carried a painful lesson and a love of animals from her first job.  She made her official debut in Philadelphia at age...