Join The Meristem Book Club and Seniors OUT for Coffee on November 10, 2021 from 7-9 pm via Zoom for an exclusive opportunity to speak with Jeffrey H. Jackson about his book, “PAPER BULLETS Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis.” Purchase the book online from Novel Memphis.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe, two gender norm-defying artists better known as Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore in the 1920s and 1930s, are the courageous subjects of the riveting book, PAPER BULLETS: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis (NEW IN PAPERBACK – Date: November 2, 2021, $16.95), by Jeffrey H. Jackson, an expert on European history and culture who teaches at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN. Jackson vividly portrays the little-known story of Schwob and Malherbe’s dangerous years-long anti-propaganda campaign, which used art to demoralize the Nazis.
“Lucy and Suzanne’s story does not easily align with how Europeans have remembered the war,” writes Jackson, who was drawn to these heroines after their photos and art were rediscovered in the 1990s and 2000s. “Their story requires us to realize that the histories of women, artists, lesbians, expatriates and intellectuals mattered to the overall history of the war. The women they were helped them resist the Nazis in their own unique way because they had been pushing against social norms, political values and legal strictures for years… In the end, Lucy and Suzanne remind us that a private life lived in struggle can prepare us for the larger battles to come.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jeffrey H. Jackson is Professor of History at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. An expert on European history and culture, he is the author of Paris Under Water: How the City of Light Survived the Great Flood of 1910 and Making Jazz French: Music and Modern Life in Interwar Paris. He has appeared in documentary films and helped develop “Harlem in Montmartre: A Paris Jazz Story” for PBS’s Great Performances .
