The April 1949 edition of Holiday magazine was devoted to New York. Imagine a single issue that had work by E.B. White, S.J. Perleman, Roger Angell and Langston Hughes.
It also included Ann Petry’s essay “Harlem,” which I wish I had read between grade school and high school.
When I grew up, our culture taught young people to think of Harlem as a monolith: a place where Black people lived. Petry talked of the neighborhoods in Harlem. Her essay showed the diversity within the place.
She talked of The Hill, where rich doctors and lawyers planned European tours and elaborate vacations. She talked of The Hollow, the catcher of new immigrants from the South. It was a place where landlords subdivided buildings into ever tinier apartments.
Petry talked of the pervasive fear and hatred of the cops and of the oversized influence of the Amsterdam News. She talked of Spanish Harlem and of fights among Black, Puerto Rican and Italian gangs. Children feared to use swimming pools that “belonged” to another group.
I found Petry’s essay a couple of years ago, after decades of reading about Harlem had given me a better sense of what it has been and is now.
What struck me about Petry’s piece is how much an essay can do to convey a sense of a place. I love books. But an hour with a good essay seems like a gift, a bit like an hour's conversation with a gifted teacher.
• Source: Ann Petry, “Harlem”; Holiday, April 1949. It was collected in Ann Petry: The Street, The Narrows; New York: Library of America, 2019, pp. 766-75. It was one of Library of America’s Stories of the Week and is archived here:
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