Harlem Rhapsody by Victoria Christopher Murray

Hello my lovely readers!

I am really in my fiction era right now....and I have A LOT of thoughts about this book. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
In 1919, as civil and social unrest grips the country, there is a little corner of America, a place called Harlem where something special is stirring. Here, the New Negro is rising and Black pride is evident everywhere…in music, theatre, fashion and the arts. And there on stage in the center of this renaissance is Jessie Redmon Fauset, the new literary editor of the preeminent Negro magazine The Crisis.

W.E.B. Du Bois, the founder and editor of The Crisis, has charged her with discovering young writers whose words will change the world. Jessie attacks the challenge with fervor, quickly finding sixteen-year-old Countee Cullen, seventeen-year-old Langston Hughes, and Nella Larsen, who becomes one of her best friends. Under Jessie’s leadership, The Crisis thrives, the writers become notable and magazine subscriptions soar. Every Negro writer in the country wants their work published in the magazine now known for its groundbreaking poetry and short stories.

Jessie’s rising star is shining bright….but her relationship with W.E.B. could jeopardize all that she’s built. The man, considered by most to be the leader of Black America, is not only Jessie’s boss, he’s her lover. And neither his wife, nor their fourteen-year-age difference can keep the two apart. Their torrid and tumultuous affair is complicated by a secret desire that Jessie harbors — to someday, herself, become the editor of the magazine, a position that only W.E.B. Du Bois has held.

In the face of overwhelming sexism and racism, Jessie must balance her drive with her desires. However, as she strives to preserve her legacy, she’ll discover the high cost of her unparalleled success.

The Life of Langston Hughes, Volume 1: 1902-1941, I, Too Sing America by Arnold Rampersad

Hello my lovely readers!

Boy, this book took me...I'm ashamed to say, MORE THAN A YEAR to read! Again, I blame the pregnancy, the birth and being a new mom. Let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS
In young adulthood Hughes possessed a nomadic but dedicated spirit that led him from Mexico to Africa and the Soviet Union to Japan, and countless other stops around the globe. Associating with political activists, patrons, and fellow artists, and drawing inspiration from both Walt Whitman and the vibrant Afro-American culture, Hughes soon became the most original and revered of black poets.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Hello my lovely readers!

This was another re-read for me. I hadn't read this book since high school and this book, along with The Awakening are two books that I'll regularly (and happily) re-read in each decade of my life. Let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS

Independent and articulate, Janie Crawford sets out to be her own person which is unheard of for a Black woman in the 1930s. Janie's quest for identity take her through three marriages and into a journey back to her roots.

Quicksand by Nella Larsen

 

Hello my lovely readers!

Man, I've been pumping these reviews out lately! I'm in a reading mood, FINALLY, so I must post accordingly am I right?

Anyway, I first discovered author Nella Larsen in either 2018 or 2019. I'd visited a bus bookshop and the owner recommended I should read Passing.  I loved it. It blew me away. Naturally, when I saw that Quicksand was also written by the same author and it was her first novel, I had to buy it. The summary looked interesting...but it sadly....that was the only good part of this book. Let's get into it.

SUMMARY

Helga Crane was born to a white mother and an absent father and was despised for her dark skin. Helga teaches at an all-black school in the South, but even there she feels different. 

She moves to Harlem and then eventually Denmark, but everywhere she goes, she can't seem to find a comfortable life and place for herself.

This semi-autobiographical tale shows that choosing emotional freedom can translate into a narrow existence and invokes the international dimension of 1920s Black American  culture.

The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke by Jeffrey C. Stewart

Hello my lovely readers!

Well this book took me literally, TWO MONTHS to read....but I finished it! As you already know, I love the Harlem Renaissance. I love all of the work that came out of it, it's players, it's supporters...if there's anything that's tied to the Harlem Renaissance, sign me up!

When I saw this book at The Strand in New York City, I HAD to get it. I had already read The New Negro before I got this book. I wasn't too thrilled with the book, but I think I'm going to read it again now that I'm older and just finished this biography. Let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS
A tiny, well-dressed, Black Victorian from Philadelphia would go on to be the "father" of the Harlem Renaissance, mentoring a generation of young artists, including Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. He called them the "New Negro"--the creative African Americans whose art, literature, music, and drama would inspire Black people to greatness.

In The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke by Jeffrey C. Stewart, Stewart offers the definitive biography of Locke from his childhood, to becoming the first African American Rhodes Scholar and earning a PhD in philosophy at Harvard University to his long career as a professor at Howard University.

We learn about his promotion of the literary and artistic work of African Americans as the quintessential creations of American modernism as well as his private life, especially his lifelong search for love as a closeted homosexual man in the 1920s.

Stewart's thought-provoking biography recreates the worlds of this illustrious, enigmatic man who, in promoting the cultural heritage of Black people, became -- in the process -- a New Negro himself.

Langston Hughes and the Chicago Defender: Essays on Race, Politics, and Culture, 1942-62 by Langston Hughes

Hello my lovely readers!

I saw this book on Bookstagram and had to get it RIGHT AWAY.  At the time, I was going through a heavy "books on journalism" phase and I'm so glad I picked this up! Langston Hughes is one of my favorite authors, so when I found out he wrote for the Chicago Defender, it was an automatic buy. Let's get into it!

Plum Bun by Jessie Redmon Fauset

 

Hello my lovely readers!

Oh. My. Goodness.

This book would NOT LET ME GO.

I loved this book so much, I actually surprised myself! Let's just get right into it.

"I’m sick of planning my life with regard to being coloured . I’m not a bit ashamed of my race. I don't mind in the least that once we were slaves. Every race in the world has at some time occupied a servile position. But I do mind having to take it into consideration every time I want to eat outside of my home, every time I enter a theatre, every time I  think of a profession."

SUMMARY
Plum Bun by Jessie Redmon Fauset was written in 1929 at the height of the Harlem Renaissance. It follows Angela who grows up with her Black family in Philadelphia. However, both Angela and her mother are light enough to pass as white. 

When Angela gets a taste of passing after her mother accidentally does so one day, Angela moves to New York and lives her life as a white woman. But she soon finds that life in New York and living life as white woman isn't all that it's cracked up to be.