Still Life in Harlem: A Memoir - Softcover

Harris, Eddy L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0805048529 ISBN 13: 9780805048520

Publisher: Holt Paperbacks, 1997

Synopsis

A New York Times Notable Book

About this title

Review:

That Still Life in Harlem can bring to mind the words of W. E. B. DuBois illustrates the deeply thoughtful nature of this book written by Eddy L. Harris. "Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question," W. E. B. DuBois wrote in The Souls of Black Folk, "How does it feel to be a problem?" This question is central to Harris's book, and he asks it of both Harlem and himself.

Harris lived in Harlem until he was ten years old, when his family moved to the suburbs. This separation enhances Harris's ability to write a critical memoir of Harlem, which he later describes as a "metaphor for black America," but this distance comes at a price. Much of Still Life in Harlem is concerned with the author's own alienation from the neighborhood, and at a deeper level, his alienation from himself. Harris returned to Harlem by choice, yet he cannot help but find the place in many ways disagreeable and disheartening. The situation again calls to mind the resounding words of DuBois, "Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house?" Harris is possessed with the second sight DuBois called "double-consciousness" the means to know the world through the judgments of others, or the habit "of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt." Harris's book is not without its flaws in execution, but it tells an important story in a strong and moving voice.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A worthwhile, complex commentary on the author's two-year sojourn in Harlem. Harris has built a career on being an ``insider-outsider'' ethnographer, first as a black American in Africa and then in the rural Deep South (Native Stranger, 1992; South of Haunted Dream, 1993). He now follows these with a similar foray into Harlem, an attempt to witness another aspect of the black American experience. The narrative is engaging, well-written, and sometimes insightful, but it stops short of extraordinary because of Harris's own ambiguous role. The book opens with a scene that he returns to again and again: He is standing at his window late in the night, watching intently as a man across the street beats a woman. This scene and others indicate that Harris is an observer who has made a conscious choice to live in Harlem, to not have a telephone, to deplete his funds. He can, as he himself remarks, leave any time--a fact that gives the narrative an almost anthropological aloofness. As time progresses, he does begin to initiate more conversations on the street, to take a vested interest in his surroundings, and in doing so, he finds much still to be celebrated in Harlem: a young mother who spends late nights caring for the neighborhood's children; a native son who, after a successful law career, returns to Harlem to help other youngsters. Harris is changed by these encounters and inspired to refuse hopelessness and, ultimately, offers a writing class at an after-school program. The book's title becomes something of an unintentional double entendre: As an artist Harris has successfully captured the ``still life'' of Harlem, a portrait of hopelessness and urban decay. But by the end he has subtly convinced the reader that there is still, in fact, life in Harlem. His own small transformations become his most compelling witness to that stubborn life. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0805048529
• ISBN 13: 9780805048520
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288