Between 1934 and 1939, the Work Progress Administration sent thousands of writers around the country to document local communities, and Harlem, the unofficial capital of black America, was one of them. The Harlem writers produced hundreds of slice-of-life vignettes that provide an intriguing view of ordinary African-Americans as they struggled to cope with the Great Depression and the pervasive racism of the times. Journalist Bascom has rescued 45 of these forgotten essays from WPA Archives. They include works by young luminaries-to-be, such as Ralph Ellison and Dorothy West, as well as talented unknowns like Vivian Morris. Ellison's "The Street" is a hilarious profile of a young musician unafraid of white hecklers. Often using fictional techniques, these nonfiction stories capture aspects of Harlem life during and after Prohibition: the backbreaking, poorly paid labor and union organizing; and such irresistible characters as Pullman portersAthe train-riding cosmopolitans of the black working classAand an urban colony of ingenious black pushcart vendors. Although Bascom claims that the book corrects an overly middle-class, privileged view of Harlem life left to us by the Harlem Renaissance elite, these accounts are not quite a revelation. Renaissance writers like Langston Hughes and Rudolph Fisher also left many gritty, colorful sketches of working-class Harlem life. Nevertheless, Bascom has produced a delightfully engaging and diverse portrait of an almost legendary black urban community. (Dec.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Digging beneath the glitter of the African American artistic outpouring early in this century dubbed the Harlem Renaissance, journalist Bascom unearths another Harlem from forgotten WPA Writer's Project manuscripts in the Library of Congress. Selecting 50 pieces by 11 WPA writers who worked in Harlem in the 1930s, Bascom challenges standard versions of the Renaissance's dimensionsAeverything from when it began and ended to its content and style. His selections take us beyond the close-knit circle of black intellectuals usually credited with producing the fruits of the most celebrated post-Civil War, pre-Civil Rights season of African American self-discovery. The pieces resound not with the voices of the glitterati but with a vernacular chorus about everyday life during the Great Negro Migration. (That migration, which brought blacks from the rural South to the urban North in massive numbers, changed not merely the complexion of upper Manhattan but transformed it into the world's black capital.) This important book promises to shift discussions about Harlem, the Renaissance, New York, and Depression-era America in popular culture, literature, history, and folklore. Highly recommended.AThomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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