“J’ai deux amours, mon pays et Paris.” – Josephine Baker

Paris has long been a home to expats. In the 1900s, people like Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Pablo Picasso left their homes for the City of Lights. Some fled the disillusionment of war and the Great Depression. Others tried to escape for different reasons. But by leaving their original countries and living in France, the Lost Generation entered an in-between space, a kind of terrain vague that defies a single identity. They could be American, French, Spanish all at once, and at the same time, they could not be defined by any of those labels.

Yesterday my History of French Cinema professor told us, “Vous �tes tous des exclus.” In French, that means “you are all excluded,” or rather, that you are part of a marginalized group whose members don’t belong here or at home. 

As my time here is rapidly running out, I’ve been thinking about the implications of being an exclue. Although I deeply feel connected to Paris, I know I’m not necessarily a parisienne. I also don’t define myself as American. Maybe Pennsylvanian. But being simultaneously both and neither of those things is liberating. It’s a multiplicity, a freedom, a unique perspective that at once sees into and around and beyond those worlds, those realities.

I hope that Ernest Hemingway was write when he wrote, “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

Location: 119 Boulevard Brune, Paris, France