Still Life in Harlem

by Eddy L. Harris

A memoir of Harlem chronicles its pastoral days through its decline into a symbol of urban despair

Genres: Nonfiction

276 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1996

About the author

Eddy L. Harris is the author of six books, including Native Stranger (Vintage, 1992) and Still Life in Harlem (Holt, 1996), both selected as “Notable Books” of the year by the New York Times. He is the writer, producer, and subject of the new documentary film River to the Heart. Currently he is writing an accompanying book as well as an exploration of race in Eastern Europe. He lives in the village of Pranzac, France.
***************
Poussé par son père, il fait des études dans un collège blanc catholique, premier pas vers la Stanford University.
À 30 ans, il décide de descendre le Mississipi en canoë et fait du récit de cette expérience la matière de son premier livre, A Mississipi Solo (1988).
Native Stranger (1992) raconte le voyage d’un Blackamerican au coeur de l’Afrique. Southern Haunted Dream (1993) naît de sa traversée du Sud des Etats-Unis à moto, sur les traces de Amérique de l’esclavage et du racisme quotidien.
Still life in Harlem, qui paraît en 1996 (Harlem en traduction française, Liana Levi, 2000), mêle portraits et réflexions au cours des deux années qu’il a choisi de vivre au coeur de ce quartier new-yorkais symbole de
l’espérance noire, passée et présente.
Jupiter et moi (Liana Levi, 2005), est une évocation
de la figure paternelle.

Aujourd’hui, Eddy L. Harris a quitté Harlem et élu domicile en France (à Paris puis aujourd’hui en Poitou-Charentes), tout en voyageant régulièrement à travers les États-Unis.

Source : Entre2noirs

Reviews

[Jessaka · Rating 5 out of 5]

He Talked A Lot About Harlem, and It5 Wasn’t Always Good

Eddy spent his childhood years in Harlem and decided to go back to live there, at least for a year. He lasted two years, long enough to write about it. Maybe, he stayed too long. He wasn’t in Harlem in its heydays, not unless he was a child, a child who couldn’t remember what it was like when it was glamorous, when it was a haven for blacks, a reprieve from white Americans. His father must have seen it then, because when he came back to his old neighborhood, he stood there and wept. Such are the times in America, seen over and. Over. Decay almost everywhere.

He moved back to Harlem in the 1990s; this book was published in 1997. He tells us what it had meant to those who lived there in its beginnings, and what it is like now. It was the place to be years before his return. Now it was the place to leave, but people stayed, because there was no other place to go when you are too poor to walk away.

Over the years I thought about Harlem, how I wish that I had seen in it in its glamourous years. My sister thought the same, and when she and her daughter went to New York, they took a bus tour to see Harlem. She doesn’t remember the tour, it was nothing. You can’t see Harlem from a bus seat. You can’t see Harlem if you are white like us. You can’t even see it if you are black and just visiting. You need to experience it, and the time to have experienced it is gone.

While living in Berkeley in the 70s, I saw Telegraph Avenue. I experienced it. My friends took me to Haight-Asbury in San Francisco, and we drove its streets. I still wish that I had seen it, but I would have had to have taken the bus there often to spend the day. Still, my own experience would not have been the same as those that had lived it. I was not into living this Hippie dream.

In the 90s, Harlem was no longer Harlem, nor even for the blacks. It was no longer glamourous. Some black cities, even white ones, die from neglect, from crime and poverty. Some black towns died at the hands of the white people, like Tulsa’s Greenwood District that had died in the 20s when the white men burned it down, killing at least 300 blacks, men, women, and children. I can’t help but feel that the white man had a lot to do with Harlem’s demise, too. I blame it on our white, racist government for keeping wages low and jobs few, and for not caring about the black child’s education. The drugs just came to ease the pain; instead they brought hell.

Eddy found a cruddy apartment to rent. Better than most. He did what he had to do to fit in. Put his good clothes in the closet and hoped that the mice didn’t ruin them. He listened to his neighbor’s fight, watched men on the streets beat their women, sell drugs, get into fights with each other and even kill. It is a wonder he lasted as long as he had.

Eddy is a great writer. He is spell binding. But I wanted the glamour. And now, Harlem is being rebuilt, “gentrified.” I ask, is this a good thing? Well, yes, but only if the blacks can afford it. I have my doubts for I have heard of this before, this word, “gentrification,” which really means that a town is now too upscale for the poor to afford. In Tulsa, they did it differently. After burning the Greenwood District down, they eventually tore what was left down, put in a college and a bypass. They are fixing to put in another bypass through another black town just east of Muskogee.

When I was a child we used to go to Fresno, CA for Christmas shop in its big city. Big to me. And then we would drive down Santa Clause Lane. In the mid-90s, my husband and I moved there for work. The downtown was dead, the upscale shops had moved to a mall, and now we only saw stores that sold flea market items, not antiques. Santa Clause Lane was still there in its rich neighborhoods. Our neighbor took me to see a neighborhood that used to be nice, that was before the drugs and the gangs came in and took it over. It looked like it had been bombed, just as Eddy described parts of Harlem. I hated every minute of Fresno. Eddy now hated Harlem, or so it seemed. When my husband’s job ended, we took to the road and headed for Texas but ended up in Mississippi. The last night in Fresno, we had a drive-by shooting. The neighbor kids excitedly showed me bullet shells in the street right near our house. I was glad that we had slept that night on a mattress that was on the floor. We picked up that mat mattress and put it in our gutted-out trailer, waved goodbye to our good neighbors who had gathered on the sidewalks, and left. Eddy had done the same.

[Olivia Faye Scott]

I loved that this book was so meandering, it really felt like I was sitting down to chat with a friend and hearing about his thoughts. I have a hard time rating it for the same reason though, it didn't have a clear structure and was very stream of consciousness. But I enjoyed it a lot! I would love to know what the author thinks about me referring to Newark as "my city"

[Claudine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the fourth book I have been reading from this author and perhaps my favorite. Interesting, moving, sad also but it is a book very well written and which compels you to question the world and ourselves.
Eddy Harris books are always honest and thoughtful.

[Ensiform · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harris goes to Harlem to live for a year to write about the experience, and stays for at least two. This memoir is unlike his others. His other books concerned the reactions of others to him in odd surroundings (Blackamerican in Africa, black man in the South, black man paddling a canoe down the mighty Mississip’) as much as his reactions to their reactions and his own development. This book, however, finds Harris in what could or should be his own "place," surrounded by people who on the surface are like him. Thus, this book is mostly his meditations on the self: why does he or doesn’t he fit in Harlem? Why did he come here? What does it mean to fit in Harlem?

When he’s addressing these difficult questions, he is profound; when he describes other Harlemites’ takes on the problems, he is revealing. But I have a big problem with this book’s writing style. Harris repeats himself. He repeats the story of the creation of Harlem as mecca several times. He repeats minor observations (he didn't work while in Harlem; Harlemites can’t easily move away). He repeats the metaphor of Harlem as weedy garden. He repeats what others told him. Etc. In sum this is a fairly good book but could use some better organization and paring down. And then too I would have liked a bit more description of the people and places. Maybe Harris didn’t want to report Harlem like some exotic oddity, but I would have liked to hear more from the Harlemites.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read all of Mr. Harris's books, and this rises from extraordinary to stunning. Having been in contact with Mr. Harris, we discussed some points in the book in relativity to today. The book itself touches a very raw nerve for African Americans, and it is not so much a treatise on Harlem, but Mr. Harris's relation of being an African American in a place where he should be welcome, and his self as an African American. I've read this book numerous times and it never fails to educate me.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book wasn’t what I expected, it was better. There are many reflective parts woven in between the social studies. Once I picked this book up I couldn’t put it down. I was remembering my childhood in Harlem. Some things have changed since the 1960s and some things are trapped in time still trying to break free

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Still Life in Harlem didn’t do much for me, but it took a while for me to figure out why. Harris’s experience is his, of course, and he can write about whatever he wants, but I think that he chose to give up, to look in the direction of those who gave up. He has bought into the assimilationist racist idea that yes, there were systemic issues that caused problems for Harlem, but the only way out is that great 1980’s Republican mantra of “personal responsibility.” He gives us 260 pages of systemic and personal problems, and only 4-5 pages of anyone working on change. And that’s really not my kind of book.

At first I thought that what was missing was that the book was focusing on men, because in part it was a book about Harlem, and in part it was a book about what it means to Harris to be a Black man. Until nearly the end, he mentions only a handful of women, and they are not strong characters. The nanny took one like at Harlem and ran. Pig Foot Mary made her money and got out. A resigned mother appreciates her drug-dealing son’s income. A woman friend challenges him about his authenticity.

In many communities, it is the women who hold things together. It’s grandmothers raising grandchildren. It’s women teachers keeping the schools going. It’s women watching, organizing, advocating, teaching, and keeping the whole damn thing running while the systems around them crumble. Where are those stories? Why didn’t Harris tell us the stories of the people keeping the bodegas running? He dropped a single line about being on his way to an after-school reading program… Where on earth was THAT part of his Harlem experience?!? Does he think that isn’t Harlem? I call bull. (Oh, wait. After 260 pages of “everything is awful,” that gets a page in the last five. Give me a break.)

I believe Harris and others that Harlem is not what it used to be, but I think he either couldn’t find or choose not to tell of a core strength that must still exist, that I *know* exists because my partner is a musician who is connected to the Harlem arts community and has played with and for them. Harris just chooses not to tell the story of Harlem’s strength. And that’s a pity.

[terrystad dit Roy · Rating 3 out of 5]

« Et de l’autre côté de la rue où j’habite (Harlem, New York, É-U), un homme fracassait une femme contre un mur de pierre, Il exhibait sa force, lui ôtant à coups de poing toute dignité, comme le monde avait fait avec lui, et exigeant d’elle, (…), la soumission qu’on avait exigée de lui ».

Le soumission en tant que noir, la soumission en tant que pauvre, la soumission en tant que personne peu ou pas éduqué, etc, etc…

Voici le ton donné dès le début du livre. L’objectif n’est pas d’écrire l’histoire des noirs États-uniens mais bien l’Histoire de son histoire, surtout celle en relation avec son père.

Oeuvre vraie car toute personnelle.

« L’homme noir est mort (…) mais c’est d’une autre mort dont je parle et que je désire pour tous les hommes noirs: c’est la mort de ce que l’homme noir a fini par symboliser. C’est une mort porteuse d’une résurrection et d’une renaissance glorieuses… »

Recommandé, sans aucun détour…

[Thomas McDade · Rating 5 out of 5]

A New York Times Notable Book

"A deeply affecting memoir, Still Life in Harlem is Eddy L. Harris's insightful look at a neighborhood - both real and metaphorical. He reveals the magic of Harlem, as it becomes home and spirit in his masterful hands. Through his keen perceptions, we enter the images and passions Harlem has always conjured, coming to understand its significance to those who live there and to those who only yearn to come to it. Unforgettably moving, this book chronicles how the world we know as Harlem came to be - from its pastoral days as a New York suburb to its days as the mecca of the black universe to its decline into a symbol of urban despair"

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written meditation on the black condition seen through the author's two years living in Harlem. Like the other book of Harris's I read, it deals with his thoughts and emotional reactions in context of his life experiences as much as with what's going on externally, so it's like stepping inside someone else's head.

[Jason Soroski · Rating 5 out of 5]

As we are in the midst of pointed racial discussions in this nation, this is a perfect book that brings powerful perspective and makes good sense of it all.

[Ilaf mala · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t know, i'm reading slowly this book, or this book slow for reading

[D.K. Mccutchen · Rating 5 out of 5]

What Happens to a Dream Deferred? (Spoiler)
This book immediately brought Langston Hughes' poem "Harlem" to mind.
Harris' book starts with a scream in the city and ends with the witnessing of, not just the fall of the Harlem Renaissance and all its dreams, but also of the contemporary act of violence that began the scream. The very act of witnessing itself helps ameliorate the violence - and perhaps softens feelings of loss for those earlier dreams of Harlem as an artistic and intellectual homeland (and more). This is such a moving book, not least because of Harris' own family link to Harlem in its heyday. It lets us, as readers, explore our own emotional and philosophic links to the idea of what Harlem was, and could have been. I like to think that my own great aunt, who began and ended her life on a Southern cotton plantation - but who spent the middle of it in a flat near the Apollo theater - would have been moved to join Mr Harris in his act of witnessing. Thanks Eddy, there is clearly still life in Harlem.

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this a difficult read; that is not to say something bad of the book or the writer. This was a good read, in fact; one I enjoyed. Mr. Harris is writing his reflections and for that he has not set an particular style or rhythm.... this makes the reading more challenging. Much of the book is taken from scenes, from a shop, the street; from these there are historical notes and flashbacks to his ancestry, ponderings of how things evolved.

[Rebecca Buckleystein · Rating 1 out of 5]

very rarely do I give up on a book - this was one of those times. I found the author didn't really build the story (the progression was lacking and the cycle of stories never built up) and the narrative was a bit shallow - the narrator never fully delves into the full breadth of his own existence (class, gender, ability, social status etc). No bueno in my estimation.

[Colettemariehayes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Laughed, cried, learned. LOVED this book. Read it in one night, want to read it again.

[Melissa]

A tad overdone. We get it, you lived in Harlem.