1,001 Novels Collected: Harlem

 1,001 Novels Collected: Harlem

1.  The Street (1946) - Ann Petry

2.   Invisible Man (1955) - Ralph Ellison

3.  Passing (1929) - Nella Larsen

4.  Home to Harlem (1928) - Claude McKay

5.  If Beale Street Could Talk (1974) - James Baldwin

6.  Big Girl (2022) by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan

7.  Ruby (1976) by Rosa Guy

8.  Stories From the Tenants Downstairs (2022) - Sidik Fofana

9.  Bodega Dreams (2000) - Ernesto Quinonez

10.  The Ballad of Black Tom (2016) by Victor LaValle

11.  Daddy Was A Number Runner (1970) - Louise Merriweather

12.  Hoops (1981) - Walter Dean Myers

13.  Cool World (1959) - Warren Miller

14.  A Hero Ain't Nothin But A Sandwich (1973) - Alice Childress

  Harlem is a great example of a place where the whole 1,001 Novels: A Library of America concept genuinely lands.  Unlike all the sub-areas besides Massachussets, Harlem is a specific geographic part of the USA with a distinct corpus of literature and an associated literary movement/culture(the Harlem Renaissance and its successors) that goes back over a century.

 Like any attempt at a canon it's an arbitrary, personal attempt, but at least an attempt of an area that deserves to be singled out, unlike, say, New Hampshire or Rhode Island.  I also liked the temporal balance among the 14 books she picked- two titles from the 20's, a book from the 40's, two from the 50's and 3 from the 70's- over half of the books picked.  Harlem also had the single best POV type book in the whole project up till now, Big Girls by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, which genuinely enlightened me.

Published 2/23/24

Big Girl (2022)

by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan

New York:  22/105

Harlem: 1/14

  The Audiobook listens run geographically ahead of the books, since fewer titles are Audiobooks.  Here we are in Harlem, the second New York borough to hit and the third sub-area of New York/New Jersey.  Like the other areas, Harlem could itself be a whole state, a small one.   I'm expecting that all of these books except maybe for one (Spanish Harlem) are going to be written by African-American authors, since Harlem is the unquestioned literary capital of Black America and part of the New York City, which is, by virtue of population size and location of the publishing industry, the unquestioned literary capital of the United States.

   

   Big Girl is the exception to all my complaints about YA type titles where the protagonist/narrator is a young woman who basically spends the whole book in her room, or like, at school, and if anything "real" happens to her its horrific.  You can write that novel any way you want, but I've read enough them at this point, 10 percent through the 1,001 Novels project, that 90% of these books are all the same, with only the ethnic background, socioeconomic status and geography changed.

  Big Girl is that other 10 percent- and these are books that genuinely open my eyes to a new perspective I hadn't given serious thought.  Here, it's the inner life of a morbidly obese high school student, the child of two African-American Yuppie/Professional parents who inhabit a refurbished brownstone in 1990's Manhattan.  Big Girl also has a strong theme of love for the pre-gentrification, now-vanished Harlem of that era, and I found both themes engaging.  Sullivan handles her subject with grace and dignity and does a fantastic job of getting inside the world of a morbidly obese teenager. 

 Published 2/26/24

The Ballad of Black Tom (2016)

by Victor LaValle

New York: 23/105

Harlem: 2/14

   I believe this is the first genre horror-fantasy book that editor Susan Straight has selected for the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America. I don't believe there has been a single science fiction title.  Perhaps that is because most horror/fantasy/science fiction books don't take place in a recognizable location on a current map of the United States, but there is still the connection of authors to place to consider.  Nathaniel Hawthorne for Salem, Mass.  I was mildly surprised that H.P. Lovecraft didn't make the cut in Rhode Island- he's an iconic literary figure for that state, whether you like his books or approve of his racism etc. I wasn't hugely surprised because my sense is that Editor Straight is concerned with representing the present populations of each state and is very much unconcerned with upholding the dead white guy canon of literary notoriety.  

   But here we are and the first book that could be called a fantasy-horror genre pick is a work plainly inspired by Lovecraft and which takes place in Harlem with an African-American protagonist. Like Lovecraft himself, the difficulty in writing a book/story about cosmic horror is complicated by the frequency with which characters find themselves seeing the unseeable or knowing the unknowable. LaValle makes clever use of Lovecraft's real life prejudices- if you've read Houellebecq's take on Lovecraft you know that his primary fear was of immigrants- and that is reflected in this plot line. 

   LaValle's magical New York is simply New York with magic in the background- no police trolls or magical citizens need apply.  Again, that reflects the works of Lovecraft himself- one has to either confront the nameless horrors in private or go someplace obscure to find them.  It was nice to finally read a fantasy/sci fi genre book after the parade of YA lit, but this story was just ok from my perspective. 

Published 3/5/24

Invisible Man (1955)

by Ralph Ellison

New York: 26/105

Harlem: 3/14

  I haven't been doing any re-reads for the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.  I Invisible Man for the first time for the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die project back in 2015.  Back then, I was a little embarrassed I hadn't read it in school.  Reading it back then I thought, why wasn't this book assigned reading. As supposed to a book like On the Road, by Jack Kerouac, which I did read in school. Within the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project, Invisible Man is representing Harlem.  Pretty obvious pick and a top three no doubt.  Here is the 2015 post:

Author Rosa Guy

Published 3/18/24

Ruby (1976)

by Rosa Guy

515 Malcolm X Boulevard, Harlem

New York: 34/105

Harlem: 4/14

    Ruby is another YA title from 1,001 Novels: A Library of America.  This is the standard YA plot of a young woman who is trying to "get out of her bedroom" and into the wider world but faces difficulties.  Here, the narrator is the daughter of widowed West Indian immigrant of African descent, living in 70's Harlem, who falls in love with her female classmate.  Pretty daring stuff for the 1970's, and I didn't make it as a YA title while I was reading the book.   Rosa Guy is an iconic figure, the only female founder of the Harlem Writers Guild in 1950, a group that was instrumental in promoting the efforts of a generation of African American writers, including Maya Angelou. 

   This being a YA book, you don't hear much about Harlem or NYC, since Ruby, again, spends most of the book either inside her house, at school or racing around trying to dodge her controlling father.   Other than the precocious lesbian relationship, the most eye raising moment was the open use of the "N" word by a white teacher at Ruby's high school.  Hard to imagine that today!

Jamaican-American author Claude McKay

Published 3/20/24

Home to Harlem (1928)

by Claude McKay

Harlem, New York City

New York: 37/105

Harlem: 5/14

 I was actually interested in reading this novel from the Harlem Renaissance- it faced a fraught path to publication and a rocky reception once published- right before the Great Depression- fell out of print and was later revived after his death.  Today he's recognized as an apostle of the Harlem Renaissance and a precursor to Black/Queer literature- McKay was either gay or bisexual and simply lived at a place and time when it wasn't acceptable to be public.    McKay's focus in Home to Harlem is on a pair of young black men, one born in the United States, the other a Haitian immigrant (McKay emigrated from the interior of Jamaica to the United States before relocating to Europe for several years).    The over-all vibe is similar to the beat genre of literature that would come decades later- McKay's plot reminded me of Kerouac or Bukowski, i.e. the lives of men who live on the fringes by some kind of conscious choice in a quest to escape 20th century conformity.

  Today it would be tough to ask someone to read Home to Harlem because of the frequent and prolific use of the n-word by the characters- all black characters- to describe themselves, others or even as a adjective- the use of the phrase "n word brown" is constant to describe the color suits and shoes.  Obviously, McKay knows what he is doing and the usage here is much like the usage in hip hop decades later, an attempt by the victimized to reclaim the word, but it is also hard not to think that these characters are consciously accepting their denigration by white society by embracing the n word in their everyday speech. It's certainly a challenge for the modern ear.  Hard to imagine an audiobook version.

Published 3/21/24

Hoops (1981)

by Walter Dean Myers

New York: 38/105

Harlem: 6/14

   I've started reading the YA titles from the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America list on my Kindle app on my cell phone (Samsung Galaxy)- the YA titles don't take a huge amount of effort to understand, and I can read them during times when I otherwise wouldn't be reading at all- watching television or what have you.  This lessens the annoyance I feel at having to read yet another YA title.  It is pretty clear to me at this point that editor Susan Straight is interested in including a wide swath of YA titles at the expense of more adult books that cover the same territory.  Hoops is about New York City basketball life circa the late 1960's, early 1970's, I think- it was hard to pin down the exact time.  It's hard for me to believe that Straight picked this book instead of The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll, which basically covers the same time and place trading Harlem for Hell's Kitchen.  To be fair, The Basketball Diaries has a fair amount of heroin usage, and maybe that is not what Straight is all about, though she hasn't shied away from books ABOUT the drug trade in NYC (See Spidertown.)

     It was good by the standards of YA lit, but I found it wanting compared to The Basketball Diaries. 

Published 3/25/24

If Beale Street Could Talk (1974)

by James Baldwin

New York: 40/105

Harlem: 7/14

     I checked this out as an Audiobook and almost immediately regretted it because this book is what you call a "Busman's Holiday" for me about a young African-American man falsely charged with raping a Puerto Rican woman, told from the perspective of his fiancé, who is, of course, pregnant with their first child.  It's also a portrait of the social fabric as it existed in Harlem in the early 1970's, Baldwin spends plenty of time with the families of both the imprisoned father to be and his betrothed.  Tish and Fonny are young, black and in love, and of course that presents a problem for the NYPD- the villain of the piece being a "red haired blue eyed" Manhattan police officer who apparently frames Fonny for a violent rape sheerly out of spit after a white shopkeeper intervenes on the couples behalf after Tish is accosted by a white junkie.

   Of course, this is all extremely old hat to me- I could tell you  about the lives of young men from African American communities ruined by a racist criminal justice system- that kind of thing was still happening in places like San Diego and Orange County when I was practicing 20 years ago, though thankfully it seems to be a thing of the past these days.   This is the third book I've read by James Baldwin- I read Notes From A Native Son just for fun and Go Tell it on the Mountain for the 1,001 Novels To Read Before You Die list.  I'm surprised I haven't read Giovanni's Room yet.    Beale Street is a good pick for the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America since it shows Baldwin depicting a slice of Harlem community but I certainly prefer Go Tell it on the Mountain if anyone is asking about my favorite James Baldwin title. 

 

Published 4/3/24
Bodega Dreams (2000)
by Ernesto Quinonez
Spanish Harlem, New York
New York: 41/105

Harlem: 8/14

Bodega Dreams was another Busman's Holiday:   A novel largely about organized crime in New York City in the early 1990's, with a Robin Hood/Spanish Harlem vibe.  The central figure, though not the protagonist or narrator, is the neighborhood kingpin, Bodega.  Bodega dreams of a larger New York empire and of reinvigorating Spanish Harlem. To that end he allies himself with crooked lawyer Nazario and together they buy and renovate decrepit Spanish Harlem apartment buildings while plying crack in the same neighborhood.  It's a common feature of narrative around the crack epidemic that local dealers destroyed their own neighborhood and that fights over territory to sell crack caused most of the violence in that period.

  It's a critical conflict that the author completely omits other than a few glancing questions asked by the protagonist/narrator, a local college student with a pregnant, evangelical wife at home.   That omission, combined with the Audiobook narration, in "tough guy" New York accent, made Bodega Dreams a chore.  It did make me want to visit Spanish Harlem- a place inside New York City I've never been.  I actually did stay in Harlem once on a visit over twenty years ago.

  Halfway done with Harlem, which is my favorite chapter/subchapter so far. Also, I'd already read a third of these titles before I started, which moves things along.  A stand out from this early period is Enormous Radio- which has a surreal element that I didn't associate with Cheever before reading it.   From there Cheever starts his series of stories in Shady Hill, New York

Published 4/9/24

The Cool World (1959)

by Warren Miller

Harlem, New York City

New York: 43/105

Harlem: 9/14

  A finalist for the National Book Award in 1960, The Cool World is a literary-world rarity: A book about African American teens written by a middle aged white guy.  Hard to say what editor Susan Straight was thinking when she included The Cool World in her Harlem section- it's a book that has been largely forgotten- an author who has been largely forgotten.   I feel like Straight must have read The Cool World when she was growing up.   Straight has done a solid job covering 50's New York and the youth culture that partially emerged from that time and place.   Like many of the books set in Harlem, The Cool World is filled with characters who spend the entire book complaining about their circumstances.  

  There isn't much escape in these pages, just characters struggling, struggling, struggling to make it through.  Miller's picture of gang life in the 1950's is (relatively) benign, sure, the gang keeps an underage prostitute cooped up in their clubhouse to bang for a buck fifty, but the hardest drugs are reefer cigarettes, and the protagonist, Duke's(leader of the Crocadiles(sp)) most sacred wish is getting his hands on a working gun.  How quaint!

Published 4/10/24

The Street (1946)

by Ann Petry

Harlem, New York City

New York: 44/105

Harlem: 10/14

    The Street was a very rough but very powerful Audiobook- 13 hours, I think?  I really need a break from Audiobooks dealing with the day-to-day life in Harlem during the mid 20th century because man, this book was rough.  The Street is, I guess, a minor classic- it made this list, and it also made the recent Atlantic Monthly Great American Novel list (136 titles).  Considering it was published in 1946- not a great decade for fiction because of, well, you know, there is also an argument that this could be on the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list.   As a 1/14 in the Harlem chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America it is a solid top 5 pick- maybe a top 3.   Petry combines work-a-day realism with episodes that evoke both surrealism and expressionism.

   Lutie Johnson is the character at the center of The Street- in the present of the novel she is a single mother, separated but not divorced from her cheating husband and living in a gritty Harlem apartment on 116th street. The Street is very much the kind of book I thought I would be getting all the time on the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America list:  A minor/forgotten canon level classic that exposes me to a place a time with which I was previously unfamiliar.   Petry doesn't shy away from the grittier side of life- the rapey super in Johnson's apartment building is stopped just short of rape on more than one occasion, and Petry gives us a look inside his head- a harrowing look- I might add.  

   The Street was very good- a top 3 for Harlem, I think.  Probably a top ten for all of New York?  Certainly a top 15.

Published 4/11/24

Stories From the Tenants Downstairs(2022)

by Sidik Fofana

Harlem, New York

New York: 45/105

Harlem: 11/14

    This book is a linked collection of short-stories- somewhere between a short story collection and a novel.  It's a format that has gained popularity in recent years, and the idea behind this book- chronicling the lives of the mostly young inhabitants of a rent controlled, Harlem area apartment building, is well adapted to the linked-short-story format.  I imagine that Fofana was seeking realism in his depiction of young lives in contemporary Harlem, so it should be viewed as a compliment that I found myself impatient with the decision making process for many of these characters- proof that I was identifying with them and putting myself in their position for the duration of this book.

   This 1,001 Novels sponsored sweep through northern New York City- the Bronx and Harlem- has brought into focus certain things that I already believed- first, that any kind of measurable progress involves satisfying Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.  The lowest/most necessary level of the pyramid is physiological: air, water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing and reproduction, and it's not surprising that many of the characters in novels set in this part of the country struggle daily with exactly those issues.   The dynamic of New York city apartment life- a world where landlords/owners are either looking to evict current tenants so they can upgrade their units OR where they are not looking to evict current tenants because they don't want to put any money into the building and just cash the rent checks- is a continuing, unresolved, ongoing crisis for thousands (tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands?) existing at the lower levels of the socio-economic ladder.

   At the same time there is little benefit derived from the joys of NYC life- these characters are literally not going anywhere the subway can't take them.  It suggests to me that the Government should intervene to upgrade the lives of those who can't fulfill the lowest level of Maslow's hierarchy- at the very least, no one should be going hungry, which happens frequently in the pages of books set in this part of America.  

   

Published 4/16/24

Daddy Was a Number Runner (1970)

by Louis Merriweather

Harlem, New York City

New York: 47/105

Harlem: 12/14

   Daddy Was a Number Runner is another classic from the Harlem canon- the Audiobook wasn't published until 2022, so make that a bit of an underground classic.  It came complete with a scholarly afternote that placed the book in context and mentioned most of the other titles and authors that Susan Straight picked for this portion of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America list.   I've been really satisfied with her Harlem picks- it's been a who's who of Harlem lit and I've been surprised at how few of these books I've read.  This book is another bleak slice of life novel written from the perspective of Francine Coffin, a twelve year old girl living with her Mom, Dad and two older brothers in Harlem during the depression.   

   The Depression-era timeline is given as the reason for the father being unable to find work, forcing him into a job as a "numbers-runner" an early 20th century predecessor of the state lottery that was run by the mob... Dutch Schulz, to be exact.  A numbers runner was the person who collected the bets and money and ferried both to the mobsters who ran the game.  In this book, gambling is portrayed as pernicious a vice as drugs would be later- Francine's father not only works as a numbers runner, he spends all of this money and more on the game, hoping for "the big hit."

  Francine meanwhile has to dodge the day-to-day reality of being constantly molested by white men who come to Harlem for that purpose, and the wives of Jewish shopkeepers who want to exploit her for her labor by making her clean the outside of a window on the 10th floor of an apartment building.  White people, as represented by Jewish people, do not come off well in this book.

   It has been many Harlem Audiobooks.  Taxing! I've implemented a new guidelines which is no more 12/13 hour Audiobooks- 10 hours is the limit going forward.  I'd rather just read the book if the Audiobook is over 10 hours, unless it is super long, in which case I'd rather listen to the Audiobook (say over 30 hours). 

Published 4/19/24

A Hero Ain't Nothing But a Sandwich (1973)

by Alice Childress

Harlem, New York

New York: 49/105

Harlem: 13/14

   A Hero Ain't Nothing But a Sandwich is a 1973 YA classic about a 13 year old Harlem boy addicted to Heroin.  Certainly it represents some kind of nadir for the depiction of addiction in YA fiction.  Speaking as someone who has been exposed to drugs in various capacities over most of my forty plus years, I found this character hard to imagine.  A thirteen year old who is shooting heroin.  It's insane.  And the whole tone of the book is so blase about it!  I mean, sure college students, heroin, of course, and maybe even high school age student, I mean, ok, it must have happened.  But a thirteen year old?  Why would a thirteen year old even want to do heroin in the first place- speaking as someone who was using drugs at that age- the whole idea of injecting oneself with a needle was abhorrent- still is!

  The tale is told from a kaleidoscope of perspectives but the main players are the junkie teen and his step dad.  There are also some interesting school teachers- one black, one white, who both provide a more complicated portrait of inner city school teachers in a few pages than the other books do in dozens.   The early 1970's were a real nadir for the social fabric in New York City.

Published 4/22/24

Passing (1929)

by Nella Larsen

Harlem,  New York City

New York: 50/105

Harlem:  14/14

     OK! Done with the Harlem chapter of 1,001 Novels: A Library of America and done with the Bronx/Harlem subgrouping from New York, i.e. the black and brown part of New York City.  Loved the Harlem books, but the Bronx titles were a bummer.  Passing is last up because I thought I had already read this book but couldn't find any record of it.  I ended up checking out the Netflix movie associated Audiobook from the library because it's only four hours long and listened to it during a run.  Passing really seems like more of a novella but it's gone firmly canon- it was on the Atlantic Great American Novel list from last month.

     After listening to the Audiobook I'm still not sure whether I've read it before or not- parts seemed familiar, but I did not remember the ending, and I feel like I would have remembered the ending if I actually had read the book.  The craziest part of this book is that it's about these two friends, both light skinned African American women from Chicago.  One "Passes" and marries a white man, who is also a virulent anti-black racist, the other marries a black Doctor.  They both end up in New York, but the book begins with the black friend recounting a meeting with the passing friend's husband, who calls his wife the n-word as a term of affection because "she gets darker every year."   It's wild. I'm going to go watch the 2021 Netflix movie just to see how they handle it in the movie.