Ralph Ellison set part of his groundbreaking 1952 novel “Invisible Man” there Chester Himes chose the neighborhood as the backdrop for a series of slim, zany, biting, frequently hilarious crime novels featuring the detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson, among them “Cotton Comes to Harlem” (1965). The Jamaican-born Claude McKay published the novel “Home to Harlem” in 1928, and the action in Nella Larsen’s 1929 classic “Passing” takes place in Harlem. But how to evoke, in the words of Ann Petry, this “hodgepodge of churches, bars, beauty parlors harsh orange-red neon signs,” this lush urban world “as varied and as full of ambivalences as Manhattan itself”? Many writers have taken up the challenge. Writing about Harlem has been known to launch literary careers, for those good enough to capture something of the vibrancy and rich history, the majesty and appalling poverty, the sounds, smells and feel of the place-its growth in the early 20th century into the capital of Black America, with the nation’s largest concentration of African-Americans the birth, in the 1920s, of the Harlem Renaissance, an explosive movement of literature, art and music the continued tough economic times and resulting crime the quiet majority of citizens who work hard in the daytime and return to their families in the evening. McDarrah/Getty Imagesįor some African-American writers, New York’s uptown neighborhood of Harlem represents both a crucible and a showcase.
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