"This book is a marvel. By turns witty and moving, and always keenly observed, Chase-Riboud's letters to her mother span decades, continents, and cultures. From them emerges an unforgettable portrait of the artist as a woman and, just as crucially, as a daughter--her soul steeped in that rarest of elements: unconditional love." --Caroline Weber, author of Proust's Duchess and Queen of Fashion " I Always Knew is an intimate and fascinating look at Barbara Chase-Riboud's remarkable trajectory--from Philadelphia to Rome, London, Paris, Egypt, Russia, China, and Senegal--and her mindset during the last third of the twentieth century: a tumultuous, historically significant time for modern art and culture in the world." --Richard J. Powell, author of Going There: Black Visual Satire " I Always Knew combines memoir, travelogue, and history to create something entirely singular in contemporary literature. Immediate, poignant, and inspiring, Chase-Riboud's letters to her mother are a gift from the past to be read with the urgency of the present." --Christophe Cherix, Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings and Prints, The Museum of Modern Art "Offering a new and unique method of connecting memoir, travelogue, letters, and contemporary art, I Always Knew is a series of dazzling biographical snapshots of pivotal periods in the life of the influential artist and writer Barbara Chase-Riboud.

" --Deborah Willis, author of Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present.