I will read any book about Frida Kahlo and this book did not disappoint! This is the story of the three years that Frida spent living in America and how trans-formative they were in respect to her art work. Stahr's writing is descriptive yet accessible. She clearly spent a lot of time researching and this book is very informative. A must read for any Frida fan!

The book was interesting to me insofar as it documented the real life of Frida Kahlo more or less rather than the current cultish creation of a fictional Saint Frida completely different from what people I knew (all passed away) who knew her said about her,   This gives a bit more about the personal picadillos and variety of affairs that seemed to be important to Kahlo and despite their temporary pretenses among real opponents of capitalism, her predilection for finding ways to live off the wealthy.

A good story about a particular time line in Frida's life. Not a detailed view more of an overview. Enjoyable.

In 1930, newlyweds Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera embarked on a three-year stay to the United States where Diego had mural commissions in San Francisco, New York, and Detroit. Although Frida was seen by the press as a charming and subordinate wife, it is during this trip that she began to articulate her artistic identity, according to Celia Stahr in Frida in America. 

Stahr’s extensively researched biography provides intimate details of Frida and Diego’s three years in the United States as well as key moments before and after the visit. She was given unprecedented access to Lucienne Bloch’s journal. Bloch, an artist who served as Diego’s apprentice and was close to the couple, wrote copiously about the couple. Along with the diary, Stahr uses Frida’s own letters, contemporaneous accounts, and academic sources to present a comprehensive though lively tale of a feisty, witty, talented, and volatile artist on the cusp of self-discovery. 

The account of the couple’s activities in the United States, which includes descriptions of Frida’s mischievous mocking of Henry Ford and baiting of the Rockefellers, augmented by such personal sources, brings Frida to life. The book addresses Frida’s political views and her bisexuality and the tension of being an artist herself married to a man perceived as a genius. 

Stahr argues that along with Frida’s foundational experiences in Mexico, her time in the United States provided a catalyst for her artistic voice. Both the macro issues—income inequality, high unemployment, and poverty—plus the personal—continued medical trials, a complicated relationship with Diego, and devastating losses as well as new and fruitful friendships and affairs ignited a creative spark that helped Frida’s genius mature.

Along with the chronicle of events, Stahr includes close analysis of important pieces Frida produced during this time, including Henry Ford Hospital, My Dress Hangs There, My Birth, Window Display on a Street in Detroit, and Self-Portrait on the Borderline Between Mexico and the United States, which appears on the cover of the book.. Since I don’t have a background in Art History, I don’t have the tools to evaluate her process of interpretation. Some of Stahr’s conclusions seemed very speculative, based on suppositions about what Frida might or might not have known, thought, or saw. At the same time, the rigorous attention to detail made me think about Frida’s paintings in a way I haven’t before.

Fabulous. Words just fail me after reading this exploration of Frida and her inner circle through the lens of the transitions that her time in the US provoked. Of course, the whole story of Frida's family and younger life must be woven into this for context, and the author does an excellent job of using primary sources like letters and interviews, as well as in-depth explorations of Frida's artworks produced during this time. It is a really moving and emotional book, and contains new information even for the Frida-philes out there who have read the other biographies. It also explores key concepts like Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, so it would be a great book for a humanities classroom. (And sources are cited impeccably.)

That said, Frida and Diego were difficult and complicated people, and their time in the US happened to coincide with the Great Depression, so it's not light reading. I rather wished I wasn't reading it this very sad week when the US has descended into race riots amid the ever-growing death toll of the pandemic. But perhaps Frida's greatest lesson for us is how to keep one's inner fires alive amid suffering, and in that case, it's exactly the right time for this book.

Thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for a digital ARC for the purpose of an unbiased review.

Accurate and comprehensive telling of Frida Kahlo's life in America and how it shaped her creatively and is represented in her artwork.  I think this is intriguing for the art enthusiast but not as enjoyable for the everyday reader.  As an Art History major, I appreciated her well-researched account, but wish that this would have been written with a more moderate audience in mind.  Everyone deserves to know and love Frida.

👑 Thanks @netgalley @stmartinspress for the gifted ebook arc of Frida in America! // I have always loved the work of Frida Kahlo and it was so cool to learn about the early years of her career and her time with Diego. Her work is fascinating and this book gave context that made me love her paintings even more. Her work was so complicated and had so much depth, I swear she was a true genius. If you are a Frida Kahlo fan (who isn't?), I definitely recommend this book! -- ♡M

FRIDA IN AMERICA | CELIA STAHR

SYNOPSIS: Mexican artist Frida Kahlo adored adventure. In November, 1930, she was thrilled to realize her dream of traveling to the United States to live in San Francisco, Detroit, and New York. Still, leaving her family and her country for the first time was monumental.

Only twenty-three and newly married to the already world-famous forty-three-year-old Diego Rivera, she was at a crossroads in her life and this new place, one filled with magnificent beauty, horrific poverty, racial tension, anti-Semitism, ethnic diversity, bland Midwestern food, and a thriving music scene, pushed Frida in unexpected directions. Shifts in her style of painting began to appear, cracks in her marriage widened, and tragedy struck, twice while she was living in Detroit.

Frida in America is the first in-depth biography of these formative years spent in Gringolandia, a place Frida couldn't always understand. But it's precisely her feelings of being a stranger in a strange land that fueled her creative passions and an even stronger sense of Mexican identity. With vivid detail, Frida in America recreates the pivotal journey that made Senora Rivera the world famous Frida Kahlo.

#deweyrating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

well researched and written this is a great book about Frieda. I loved all the descriptions and relationships in it. A very enjoyable book. Thank you #netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read this book in return for my honest review.

This is a good look at the artist Frida Kahlo. While the title makes it seems as if the book will talk about primarily the time Frida was in the United States, it really is a complete biography. The author not only discusses Frida's life but also looks at her paintings and analyzes them not only on their own merits but as an extension of Frida's thoughts and emotions about what was happening in the world around her.

This book tells the story of Kahlo’s time in America and how those years impacted her life. This history is great for the Kahlo aficionado but includes a significant amount of detail that makes the text cumbersome to the average reader. I enjoyed learning about Kahlo from this book but do not think it would be a good text for my students.

This book was such an easy and fun read. The story just flows and was so descriptive that it truly was like you were traveling with Frida throughout the country. I had heard of Frida of course but had never really read about her life before and this book was the perfect introduction to her story. Even those this only focuses on a short portion of Frida's life it shows rich her life was and what an influential person she was. This was a stellar biography and I look forward to reading more from this author.

A really engaging, interesting look at Frida's life in America. It's a topic I've not seen before, so I was fascinated throughout. It's also written in an accessible way, making it easy to follow along. It felt more like prose in some parts rather than a historical account. Excellent.

I. Loved. This. Book. To be fair, I'm naturally interested in biographies because I love getting to learn about people I will never get to meet, but 'Frida in America' is one of the BEST biographies I have ever read. I didn't know much about Kahlo before reading this book (I could identify her artwork--that was the extent of my knowledge), but I left with an understanding of the early events that shaped Kahlo as an artist. At times, I forgot that Stahr was the writer of this biography and felt like I was in conversation with Kahlo, which is a huge compliment to Stahr as a writer. If you like well-researched, captivating biographies, you simply cannot miss this one.

Extremely detailed biography about her time in America. I learned a great deal, but there were two aspects that could have dramatically improved the book. Half the time, Stahr writes like Frida is a character in a novel, where she assumes Frida's emotions and thoughts and writes them down as happening, without much documentation to prove it. However, the other half of the time, Frida is simply the research topic and her emotions and thoughts are relayed by documenting Frida's own letters or other proof. The inconsistency was a little jarring.

The second issue with the book may simply be the ARC I had. A great deal of the text references documents and especially paintings or other images. It would have been much more helpful to actually have those images in the text and refer to them while reading. I'm not sure if the print version will have the images. If so, I'd bump up my rating to 4 stars. If the print version does not include images that are referenced in the text, I'd lower the stars down to 2 stars because it is vital to look at the images to understand the author's arguments and opinions.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

"Only twenty-three and newly married to the already world-famous forty-three-year-old Diego Rivera, she was at a crossroads in her life and this new place, one filled with magnificent beauty, horrific poverty, racial tension, anti-Semitism, ethnic diversity, bland Midwestern food, and a thriving music scene, pushed Frida in unexpected directions. Shifts in her style of painting began to appear, cracks in her marriage widened, and tragedy struck, twice while she was living in Detroit."

I love reading anything I can about Frida, so when I saw this book I knew I HAD to read it! And I was not disappointed. This book was so great, there arent many books about Frida's time in the united states. So this book was perfect new adventure.

Check out my full video review: https://youtu.be/7M-BwOWqzwc

Frida in America is a non-ficition book following Frida and her time in America and how that time evolved and affected her as an artist!

I always found Frida’s life fascinating and interesting. She was a spectacular woman, that had to a live in a time where being a woman and an artist was not easy. She dwelled into subjects like sex, race, fertility and culture. There is many sides of her life I did not know, and I’m very happy I do now. However, reading a nonfiction was very dry for me that is not used to it. There was some parts that really flew over my head, and in my arc version at least there was no pictures of the painting/drawings that the author wrote about, which made it kind of hard to follow (and I had to google them myself). I don’t know if they are in the finished version of the book though. Overall I do feel like I learned a lot, but the writing was very very flat, which made me not what to pick up that book sometimes because I was bored. Though some parts was as I said very interesting! I don’t regret reading it and I would recommend it for anyone who is interested! 3/5 stars.

Comprehensive and fair examination of Frida's life and time in the US.  Pairing this with other Frida novels like The Lacuna would be great for a book club.

This was slow going for me, but very worthwhile.

Frida now has iconic status, but this book goes into depth about a time in her life when she was young and completely unknown (except as Diego Rivera’s young wife).

Stahr does a good job of creating context for this period, addressing her teen years as they shaped her, and her later years as her life and art were shaped by this 3 year interlude in the US. Nevertheless, the book’s focus is on just 3 years of Kahlo’s life, and there’s plenty there!

I will add that I enjoyed this book much more once I started googling the paintings and photos referenced within. I hope the print edition includes them! Stahr  is pretty firm about the meaning of each work, but I appreciated viewing them and adding my own thoughts others.

(With thanks to St. Martin’s and to NetGalley for the ARC.)

I had read about Frida’s life and viewed many of her paintings just last month in the Frida Art Museum in Playa de Carmen, and have spent many winters in Mexico, so this was a very special and exciting book for me.
The descriptions of her paintings and her life in America gives great insight into who Frida was and who she became in the 3 years she spent in America. 
Despite numerous illnesses as a child and very severe injuries in a bus accident in her youth, that left her in constant pain, she never gave in to it.   Frida wanted to promote women and their femininity and rights through her art.   Being Mexican, she was all too familiar with male chauvinism.  She married a man who was described as pudgy and older.  Diego was a well known artist and they went to América because he had been commissioned to paint murals.  Her paintings provided Frida with her own identity. The author does a great job of describing her paintings and I took time to look many of them up.  (Very worthwhile).

A quote from the book which I found rather sad.
“I have never had anyone who loved only me. I have always shared love with another.”37 
Diego was certainly not a faithful husband, in fact she divorced him, but later remarried him.
To Frida love was the main reason for living.
I recommend reading this book, it is not a quick read, but very worthwhile.

This book really takes a deep dive into the life of Frida and Diego, with so much detail on different aspects that I never knew.  But after the first few chapters, I found the citations annoying, and despite the citations, much of the information about what Frida was feeling and doing seemed to be pulled from conjecture.  While I enjoyed learning so much about the culture and climate of their time in America and Mexico, so much of the story seemed to jump from one event to another without links.  After about a third of the book, I wound up skipping ahead to chapters that interested me and skimming the rest.

Thanks to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for an advanced reader's copy for review.

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