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City of Fire #3
Striver's Row, a Novel
The Rev. Jonah Dove is the son of a legendary Harlem minister, and a man troubled in both mind and spirit. He feels himself unworthy and incapable of taking up the burden of running his church from the larger-than-life figure who is his father. He is haunted both by his own, shameful history of "passing" as a white man in college, and by the prospects for his people in the harsh, new, racist age he fears the world is entering. Malcolm Little -- better known as Malcom X -- is a teenage hustler from Lansing, Michigan by way of Boston, a young man on the make, trying always to be something bigger, tougher, savvier, and more confident than he really is. On his way to New York, Malcolm happens to come to the rescue of Jonah and his wife, Amanda, when they are attacked by some drunken soldiers on the train. From then on, their paths cross repeatedly as they each go about trying to find what they really want out of the roiling, wartime city, until the moment when Harlem finally erupts around them, as a people driven beyond endurance strikes out blindly at all the forces keeping it entrapped in misery and hopelessness. Stranded on the streets of a rioting city, Jonah and Malcolm meet each other once more, as they come to grips with what they are and what the future will hold for them.
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First published January 31, 2006
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About the author
Kevin Baker
102 books119 followersKevin Baker is the author of the New York, City of Fire trilogy: Dreamland, Paradise Alley, and Strivers Row. Most recently, he's been writing about politics for Harper's Magazine and the New York Observer.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews
May 27, 2016
Kevin Baker is one of those gifted authors who recreates a time and place vividly as if his pen channels a movie camera-- Striver's Row is akin to a long cinematic prose poem about Harlem in the early 1940's. Arguably the most intriguing part of the novel is the portrayal of the early life of Malcolm Little (before he becomes Malcolm X) and how he gets caught up in the murky and edgy life of numbers running in 1940's Harlem. The parallel narrative concerns Jonah Dove, a fictional minister whose Christian faith is shaken by his personal shortcomings and the political realities of African Americans during this explosive period in history, with race riots comingling with America's entrance into World War II. Each protagonist's narrative briefly intersects with the other, but most memorable are the rich details of Harlem, leading us into old gin-joints and dance halls of the period, and Baker finds just the right rhythm and phrasing to paint the atmosphere of '40's swing music and culture such that the prose attains a kind of syncopated street beat, as close to the rhythm and spirit of jazz as pure narrative can achieve. Adding another layer of authenticity is the New York slang of the era, not overdone, but polishing the dialogue with an urban twang that resonates of a time and place otherwise preserved in the pages of Richard Wright and Gwendolyn Brooks. Baker creates rich portrayals of true-to-life figures without resorting to cookie-cutter or newspaper-thin portrayals. Though the theme of racial struggle is clear enough, depicted in the separate worlds of Malcom X and Jonah Dove, yet it is difficult to tease out an overarching meaning or grand statement in these colorful pages of 1940's Harlem and New York. Yet, the prose is so moving and stirs up many fascinating images the work stands as a splendid addition to Baker's historical panoramas found in other novels that explore Fin-de-Siecle and early 20th Century America including Dreamland.
November 12, 2013
Nobody makes historical fiction burn like Kevin Baker. After working as the chief researcher for Harry Evans's The American Century , Baker stepped out of the wings and published his first novel, Dreamland , a spectacular, sprawling tale about the violent underbelly of New York in 1910. He followed that three years later with Paradise Alley , an even more incendiary story about the destruction of Manhattan during a Civil War draft riot in 1863. And now he's completed what he calls his "City of Fire" trilogy with Strivers Row , a novel about Harlem during World War II.
It's the least fantastical of his three novels and, I'm sorry to say, the least fantastic. Readers coming to Baker for the first time will discover in Strivers Row a panoramic recreation of Harlem in all its explosive opportunity and vice. But his many devoted fans, like me, are bound to find this final volume surprisingly muted, as though the author had decided it was high time to put away the melodrama and pyrotechnics that inflamed his first two books.
Part of this shift stems from the fact that Baker is now stepping into more recent and, one might argue, more sensitive history. His work has always blended fictional and historical characters -- many of the violent encounters described in Paradise Alley were drawn directly from contemporary newspaper accounts; in Dreamland , Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung make hilarious appearances. But with Strivers Row, Baker for the first time places a real person at the center of his story: Malcolm Little, the black activist later known to the world as Malcolm X.
An author -- particularly a white author -- dare not play with the image of Malcolm X the way one might with Freud, Col. O'Brien, Kid Twist or Gyp the Blood, historical figures so widely caricatured, exaggerated or forgotten that they've passed into the public domain for any kind of fictional treatment one might desire. But Strivers Row labors under a burden of respect that's ultimately constraining. Baker writes in his acknowledgments, "Nearly every incident from Malcolm's life as a child in Michigan, in Boston, on the train, and in Harlem, has been drawn either from the Autobiography , or from other reputable sources. Nothing that Malcolm's character does in this novel is inconsistent with the tenor of his thoughts or actions, even as he presented them himself. These scenes have, furthermore, been drawn with great sympathy for their subject."
He's entirely right. Scenes of Malcolm's adolescence with his mentally ill mother, his experiences in foster care and his early days in Harlem as a petty gangster are lifted directly from the autobiographical descriptions by Malcolm X and his co-author, Alex Haley. But Baker's "great sympathy" effects an odd sort of alteration. In The Autobiography, Malcolm X describes his childhood eagerness to please white people, his outlandish costumes, his foolish interests and his casual criminality with unrelenting scorn. Every scene of ignorance and debasement is told from the point of view of someone who has seen the light and converted. But Baker's earnest, deeply sympathetic approach to these early years, combined with his decision to end this very long novel in 1943, before Malcolm X's incarceration and his membership in the Nation of Islam, drains much of the tension and purpose from the story of Malcolm's early life. His rendition is full of the young man's pathos and doomed hope, but it leaves him there in a way that makes the story surprisingly static and truncated.
The other protagonist of Strivers Row presents a more dynamic and nuanced figure. The fictional Rev. Jonah Dove is a light-skinned black man, reminiscent of Adam Clayton Powell Jr., caught in the vise of his own conscience. The devoted son of a retired charismatic minister, he feels wholly inadequate to lead the Harlem congregation his father built by the force of his own will. "He was gripped in the old fear," Baker writes, "knowing that his father was the church, that he [Jonah] could not possibly replace him."
That personal anxiety is exacerbated by his ominous sense of black people's precarious position in white society. Even on his genteel block on Strivers Row, a virtual oasis in Harlem, Jonah knows the deference they receive from white policemen is all pretense: "Their smiles more than a little patronizing . . . full of the guileless joy one might see on the faces of people watching a particularly cunning monkey in the Central Park Zoo: Well, well, look at the wealthy darkies!" Rumors about what's happening to the Jews in Poland have made Jonah terrified that America might pursue a similar "final solution" to its problem with blacks. "Of course they would take the opportunity to get rid of everyone they hated," Jonah thinks. "Of course they would, if they thought they could get away with it. And if the Jews, why not us next?"
Depressed about his own inadequacy, disgusted by the sins he sees his people committing all over Harlem and terrified about the next step in America's racial conflict, Jonah is drawn again and again to a private vice that fills him with as much shame as relief: He sneaks out of the house, finds a dirty bar, slips "into the squalid booth of a men's room, and emerges a new man" -- a white man. These harrowing scenes of Jonah passing -- moving confidently through white barber shops, restaurants and hotels -- are an extraordinary demonstration of Baker's power as a novelist, and they provide Strivers Row with its most incisive commentary on the psychological violence that racism internalizes. As his sister notes, in a wry allusion to Ralph Ellison, Jonah doesn't really want to be white; he just wants to be invisible.
In a dramatic finale during the Harlem riot of 1943, Jonah finally manages to shed that desire, but elsewhere in the city an invisible young man is still preparing to capture the attention of blacks and whites. Long as this novel is, it's hard not to feel disappointed that it couldn't have stretched a little longer to capture his transformation, too. ·
It's the least fantastical of his three novels and, I'm sorry to say, the least fantastic. Readers coming to Baker for the first time will discover in Strivers Row a panoramic recreation of Harlem in all its explosive opportunity and vice. But his many devoted fans, like me, are bound to find this final volume surprisingly muted, as though the author had decided it was high time to put away the melodrama and pyrotechnics that inflamed his first two books.
Part of this shift stems from the fact that Baker is now stepping into more recent and, one might argue, more sensitive history. His work has always blended fictional and historical characters -- many of the violent encounters described in Paradise Alley were drawn directly from contemporary newspaper accounts; in Dreamland , Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung make hilarious appearances. But with Strivers Row, Baker for the first time places a real person at the center of his story: Malcolm Little, the black activist later known to the world as Malcolm X.
An author -- particularly a white author -- dare not play with the image of Malcolm X the way one might with Freud, Col. O'Brien, Kid Twist or Gyp the Blood, historical figures so widely caricatured, exaggerated or forgotten that they've passed into the public domain for any kind of fictional treatment one might desire. But Strivers Row labors under a burden of respect that's ultimately constraining. Baker writes in his acknowledgments, "Nearly every incident from Malcolm's life as a child in Michigan, in Boston, on the train, and in Harlem, has been drawn either from the Autobiography , or from other reputable sources. Nothing that Malcolm's character does in this novel is inconsistent with the tenor of his thoughts or actions, even as he presented them himself. These scenes have, furthermore, been drawn with great sympathy for their subject."
He's entirely right. Scenes of Malcolm's adolescence with his mentally ill mother, his experiences in foster care and his early days in Harlem as a petty gangster are lifted directly from the autobiographical descriptions by Malcolm X and his co-author, Alex Haley. But Baker's "great sympathy" effects an odd sort of alteration. In The Autobiography, Malcolm X describes his childhood eagerness to please white people, his outlandish costumes, his foolish interests and his casual criminality with unrelenting scorn. Every scene of ignorance and debasement is told from the point of view of someone who has seen the light and converted. But Baker's earnest, deeply sympathetic approach to these early years, combined with his decision to end this very long novel in 1943, before Malcolm X's incarceration and his membership in the Nation of Islam, drains much of the tension and purpose from the story of Malcolm's early life. His rendition is full of the young man's pathos and doomed hope, but it leaves him there in a way that makes the story surprisingly static and truncated.
The other protagonist of Strivers Row presents a more dynamic and nuanced figure. The fictional Rev. Jonah Dove is a light-skinned black man, reminiscent of Adam Clayton Powell Jr., caught in the vise of his own conscience. The devoted son of a retired charismatic minister, he feels wholly inadequate to lead the Harlem congregation his father built by the force of his own will. "He was gripped in the old fear," Baker writes, "knowing that his father was the church, that he [Jonah] could not possibly replace him."
That personal anxiety is exacerbated by his ominous sense of black people's precarious position in white society. Even on his genteel block on Strivers Row, a virtual oasis in Harlem, Jonah knows the deference they receive from white policemen is all pretense: "Their smiles more than a little patronizing . . . full of the guileless joy one might see on the faces of people watching a particularly cunning monkey in the Central Park Zoo: Well, well, look at the wealthy darkies!" Rumors about what's happening to the Jews in Poland have made Jonah terrified that America might pursue a similar "final solution" to its problem with blacks. "Of course they would take the opportunity to get rid of everyone they hated," Jonah thinks. "Of course they would, if they thought they could get away with it. And if the Jews, why not us next?"
Depressed about his own inadequacy, disgusted by the sins he sees his people committing all over Harlem and terrified about the next step in America's racial conflict, Jonah is drawn again and again to a private vice that fills him with as much shame as relief: He sneaks out of the house, finds a dirty bar, slips "into the squalid booth of a men's room, and emerges a new man" -- a white man. These harrowing scenes of Jonah passing -- moving confidently through white barber shops, restaurants and hotels -- are an extraordinary demonstration of Baker's power as a novelist, and they provide Strivers Row with its most incisive commentary on the psychological violence that racism internalizes. As his sister notes, in a wry allusion to Ralph Ellison, Jonah doesn't really want to be white; he just wants to be invisible.
In a dramatic finale during the Harlem riot of 1943, Jonah finally manages to shed that desire, but elsewhere in the city an invisible young man is still preparing to capture the attention of blacks and whites. Long as this novel is, it's hard not to feel disappointed that it couldn't have stretched a little longer to capture his transformation, too. ·
October 1, 2010
This is the third book in a triology;something I didn't realize until I got too far in reading this book. It basically takes you back to the earlier days when racisim was more prevelant and intergration was just a thought. Very enlighting story of the everyday people living in Harlem NY and it tells how it impacted the lives of poeple such as Malcolm X, Adam Clayton Powell and the High color Minister Jonah Dove. It took me months to read this book. Sometimes I felt like giving up 'cause there was so much details of each character in the book but I held out....
October 3, 2007
Rigorously historical account of the time-period.
Actual historical persons represented in an engaging plot.
However, I NEVER forgot while I was reading that the author was white. As a white author it is an audacious choice the write the story of Malcolm X's Harlem years but I could never filter that caveat out of my consciousness as I read the narrative.
Actual historical persons represented in an engaging plot.
However, I NEVER forgot while I was reading that the author was white. As a white author it is an audacious choice the write the story of Malcolm X's Harlem years but I could never filter that caveat out of my consciousness as I read the narrative.
February 2, 2015
Certainly made me curious about Malcolm X. Sometimes difficult to read about the poor race relations in the USA in the 1940s and to realize that despite progress there is still a long way to go. The alternate points of view between "Red" and Jonah were interesting but I didn't totally understand why that was necessary and the connection between the two seemed contrived.
August 28, 2025
This book concludes the City of Fire trilogy, a look at Black American life in New York in the early decades of the twentieth century. This volume focuses on the World War II years and is centered upon the stories of the real Malcolm Little (Malcolm X) and the fictional preacher Jonas Dove. They cross paths at the beginning of the novel and their stories will interlink throughout the book. This book moves with great detail through character studies of these two (and a few others) as well as painting a detailed picture of life in New York's Harlem during these years. The struggles and frustrations of African Americans in this time, as well as the potential (and danger and agonizing over) passing as white for some are well-developed. A long, but rewarding read.
November 5, 2018
Baker's novel, set in 1943 Harlem, tells the story of two men - the fictional Reverend Jonah Dove, black preacher, but light-skinned enough to pass as white - and 19-year-old street hustler Malcolm Little, who would soon become the real-life Malcolm X. Baker does an extraordinary job of recreating a specific time and place - I felt that future generations could reconstruct Harlem just from this book. The novel lacks the plot and pace that made his other two historical novels so wildly successful, but it works as a character study.
November 12, 2022
Listened to this book on a road trip. Great perspective of Harlem during WWII and also of how black soldiers were treated - not something I had heard a lot about. The way we have treated African Americans in this country continues to astound me. Malcolm X is a key character in this book, before he became Malcolm X. It's a good, historical novel about a time and place that I hadn't read much about. The reader is excellent. Found it a little long and wordy but it kept our interest through the trip.
February 25, 2020
So i liked the concept... the connections between jonah and Malcolm. Both lost. But not just them all of the characters sophie/miranda. The blend of history with fiction. The parallel similiarities of world war II poland germany concentration camps. and harlem. But i overall kept thinking the author could have summed the book up in 1/2 the pages.
February 23, 2021
Read this as a stand alone and loved the way the early 20th century setting came to life. I didn't much care about Malcolm X as a young man leading a charmed life of evading criminal penalties and finding anything meaningful in a nutty cult, but it was understandable in the context of the times.
July 29, 2020
My least favorite of the City of Fire trilogy but still good.
September 22, 2009
Strivers Row is the third of Baker's City of Fire trilogy. The earlier books are Dreamland and Paradise Alley. All take place in New York City.
Strivers Row is a neighborhood housing upper and middle class Negro families including the Doves. Milton Dove, the father of Jonah and father-in-law of Amanda, founded the New Jerusalem Church.
Malcolm is a young hustler. The action takes place in Harlem during the WWII. At a time after the war and beyond the book's time period, Malcolm will become Malcolm X.
Baker is an excellent researcher who organizes hundreds of facts and insights about life in Harlem during the war. He reveals his many sources in a seven page Acknowledgments, and a Note On Sources, at the end of the novel. Harlem is a major character.
The plot addresses the intertwined lives of Malcolm and Jonah. Baker accomplishes this by alternating chapters entitled "Malcolm" or "Jonah" and uses the chapters to provide new insights about the respective men and to develop the plot. Baker does not follow a strict chapter alternation; Malcolm dominates and two or more consecutive chapters frequently are devoted to him.
Malcolm comes from a family of 10 counting half brothers and half sisters. The family following its father's death almost starves. It is Malcolm's job to go to the local slaughter house to fight other boys for discarded animal lungs. He is elected class president and looks forward to career counseling. His classmates are steered to interesting jobs but his teacher/counselor humiliates him by claiming Malcolm might one day become a successful handyman or carpenter.
Jonah and Malcolm meet on a train where Malcolm is employed selling sandwiches from a cart pushed down the aisle. Malcolm fights and saves Jonah from a beating by drunken white soldiers. After the fight, Malcolm jumps off the stopped train and dives into water. Neither man knows the other, even the other's name.
Malcolm begins life in Harlem as a waiter in Small's Bar. Small has bribed a local detective, but is very concerned that other vice squad cops might discover his many illegal activities. He strongly cautions Malcolm to stay within the law. Malcolm does not and directs a soldier to a prostitute. Small fires him and tells him to stay out of the bar.
All is not lost. Malcolm dances extraordinarily exuberantly with Miranda, a white woman. They leave and have outstanding sex. Malcolm is obsessively smitten.
After Small's Malcolm turns to various hustles including running numbers, selling dope and working as a john walker, taking white men to black whores. He dreams of making enough money to take Miranda off to Hollywood.
Jonah regards himself to be pampered failure. He is the head preacher at his father's church, but can not excite and motivate his congregation. After the train fight he believes he can not protect his wife. He is light skinned and at college passed for white for several months. His greatest failure was being found out. Occasionally, he passes for white again to see his sister, Sophia, in the Village, who is also passing.
Malcolm is bright and starts reading The Biography of Elijah Muhammad as told by X. He is very interested and almost haunted by the book but he does not stop hustling. Baker points out in the Acknowledgments that Malcolm would later, again beyond this book's scope, use his redemption from crime as a central theme in the Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Strivers Row is 550 pages long. My interest was kept throughout except for the description of Elijah Muhammad's life and theology. Never trust a white man is a main point in that theology.
Malcolm, Jonah and Miranda dramatically come together. An excellent book, you will feel as if you are in Harlem.
Strivers Row is a neighborhood housing upper and middle class Negro families including the Doves. Milton Dove, the father of Jonah and father-in-law of Amanda, founded the New Jerusalem Church.
Malcolm is a young hustler. The action takes place in Harlem during the WWII. At a time after the war and beyond the book's time period, Malcolm will become Malcolm X.
Baker is an excellent researcher who organizes hundreds of facts and insights about life in Harlem during the war. He reveals his many sources in a seven page Acknowledgments, and a Note On Sources, at the end of the novel. Harlem is a major character.
The plot addresses the intertwined lives of Malcolm and Jonah. Baker accomplishes this by alternating chapters entitled "Malcolm" or "Jonah" and uses the chapters to provide new insights about the respective men and to develop the plot. Baker does not follow a strict chapter alternation; Malcolm dominates and two or more consecutive chapters frequently are devoted to him.
Malcolm comes from a family of 10 counting half brothers and half sisters. The family following its father's death almost starves. It is Malcolm's job to go to the local slaughter house to fight other boys for discarded animal lungs. He is elected class president and looks forward to career counseling. His classmates are steered to interesting jobs but his teacher/counselor humiliates him by claiming Malcolm might one day become a successful handyman or carpenter.
Jonah and Malcolm meet on a train where Malcolm is employed selling sandwiches from a cart pushed down the aisle. Malcolm fights and saves Jonah from a beating by drunken white soldiers. After the fight, Malcolm jumps off the stopped train and dives into water. Neither man knows the other, even the other's name.
Malcolm begins life in Harlem as a waiter in Small's Bar. Small has bribed a local detective, but is very concerned that other vice squad cops might discover his many illegal activities. He strongly cautions Malcolm to stay within the law. Malcolm does not and directs a soldier to a prostitute. Small fires him and tells him to stay out of the bar.
All is not lost. Malcolm dances extraordinarily exuberantly with Miranda, a white woman. They leave and have outstanding sex. Malcolm is obsessively smitten.
After Small's Malcolm turns to various hustles including running numbers, selling dope and working as a john walker, taking white men to black whores. He dreams of making enough money to take Miranda off to Hollywood.
Jonah regards himself to be pampered failure. He is the head preacher at his father's church, but can not excite and motivate his congregation. After the train fight he believes he can not protect his wife. He is light skinned and at college passed for white for several months. His greatest failure was being found out. Occasionally, he passes for white again to see his sister, Sophia, in the Village, who is also passing.
Malcolm is bright and starts reading The Biography of Elijah Muhammad as told by X. He is very interested and almost haunted by the book but he does not stop hustling. Baker points out in the Acknowledgments that Malcolm would later, again beyond this book's scope, use his redemption from crime as a central theme in the Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Strivers Row is 550 pages long. My interest was kept throughout except for the description of Elijah Muhammad's life and theology. Never trust a white man is a main point in that theology.
Malcolm, Jonah and Miranda dramatically come together. An excellent book, you will feel as if you are in Harlem.
January 13, 2008
The third novel in a trilogy about New York City by historical novelist Kevin Baker is the weakest of the three. It has the usual mix of fictional and non-fictional characters. Among the latter are Adam Clayton Powell, the Collyer brothers, and Mayor LaGuardia. But the most significant of the historical characters is a young hustler named Malcolm Little, or Detroit Red. We also get various jazz musicians, street criminals (West Indian Archie), and the founders of the Nation of Islam. Baker is a good storyteller but not a gifted stylist, nor blessed with a great ear for dialogue. What he can pull off with a truckful of characters from diverse backgrounds isn’t sustainable when he works a whole book’s worth of black characters, Sugar Hill elites and street credentialed hoodlums. He can research the different argots associated with the various groups (white upper class college students, middle class African-Americans, hustlers, jazz musicians, ministers, etc.) but he can’t make the dialogue sing with authenticity. The ear isn’t quite there. In a tauter narrative you might not have noticed the tin-ear but this one treads water for many pages and does so in a way where time seems to be operating in different speeds: Jonah, the white enough to pass minister, occupies time that seems to move in days that add up to a frenzied few weeks; Malcolm has time unfold in what seems to be months, maybe even years—moving to NY, working at Smalls, getting in and out of trouble with West Indian Archie’s gang, getting lost in drugs and alcohol for long periods of time and having hallucinations about Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm is a quick study but he goes from novice to expert via study and experience in telescoped events that are summarized to make credible his becoming part of the Smalls’ scene, integral to Archie’s gang, a freelance drug seller to policy buyers and jazz musicians. The summaries suggest time passed but the novel’s chronology requires it to be days to move from near country bumpkin to hip Harlem hustler—from someone who knows nothing about numbers running or john-walking or drug peddling to someone who is expert and has constructed insider relationships with his clientele. Plus there are bizarre reversals, from fearlessness to paranoid double dealer being hounded from his routes by shadows and scavenging addicts. Much of what happens is supported by historical evidence, including the culminating riot in Harlem but some is played with—the death of the Collyers a few years before it actually happened, Malcolm’s visions (the fictional Malcolm has more of them and sooner than the real one). The middle crawls with Jonah’s dilemma (to leave his church and disappear into the white world in which he could pass or stay and serve his church and community) and Malcolm’s criminal endeavors and unsuccessful romance with Miranda, a white jazz singer (who is actually Sophia, Jonah’s very light-skinned sister). The researcher’s fascination and the writer’s false sense of his capabilities undermine his intentions—too much information and too much unimpressive showing off. It is less compelling than Paradise Alley and less sure of itself than Dreamland.
March 4, 2016
Strivers Row is a novel about the wholly fictitious Rev. Jonah Dove and a young Malcolm Little whose paths cross and recross during the summer of 1943. But the primary character is Harlem. Uptown New York. Small's Paradise. Servicemen - white and colored - on leave. Whores. Drug dealers. Adam Clayton Powell. Storefront churches. Strivers Row and Sugar Hill. And jazz.
This is a big book and the CD production, read by Thomas Anthony Penny, does it justice with each of the 18 CDs beginning and ending with a plaintive saxophone setting the mood.
There is violence and tenderness, kindness and betrayal. It is 1943 and there is a war going on - overseas and at home. White policemen, on horses and on motorcycles, patrol Harlem, together with MPs, protecting soldiers on leave from Harlem residents who increasingly resent their presence. And there are internal wars as both Jonah and Malcolm struggle to find racial pride - Jonah lightskinned enough to pass if he chooses, and Malcolm, after learning what he can't do in the white dominated world, wearing his zoot, hair conked, becoming Detroit Red.
Strivers Row is a fast moving book, hard to stop. The CD version is such a treat for the senses, with rich use of slang, bits of songs, names of people and places. This is historical fiction at its best. The two characters. seeming opposites - the preacher and the hustler - provide both tension and balance.
Jonah's father founded the New Jerusalem Church after leading a group of people out of the South, to New York during the Great Migration. The church grew and prospered under its charismatic leader. Jonah has done what he was supposed to do and has become the church's pastor, not entirely sure he wants to be a minister, believing he does not have the power of his father, still alive in his 90s.
While Jonah struggles in his father's shadow, Malcolm struggles to become a man in the absence of his father. He is intelligent and charming but learns as a young boy that despite his abilities, his dream of becoming a lawyer is not possible. He leaves Michigan, first for Boston, and then, working as a dining car porter, arrives in Harlem. He works at Small's for a while, then runs numbers for West Indian Archie. He meets and believes he loves a white club singer. He smokes a lot of dope. And he is visited by a little brown man named Elijah who comes and goes mysteriously.
I loved this book. I felt completely immersed in its world. Every character was fully drawn and believable. It is still hard to believe that Jonah never actually lived. And I have mixed feelings about Malcolm; author Kevin Baker has fictionalized the early years of Malcolm X, especially his interest in the Nation of Islam. This works as a piece of fiction, but I found it disconcerting that one of the two main characters was completely made up while the other was a real person, distorted.
This is a big book and the CD production, read by Thomas Anthony Penny, does it justice with each of the 18 CDs beginning and ending with a plaintive saxophone setting the mood.
There is violence and tenderness, kindness and betrayal. It is 1943 and there is a war going on - overseas and at home. White policemen, on horses and on motorcycles, patrol Harlem, together with MPs, protecting soldiers on leave from Harlem residents who increasingly resent their presence. And there are internal wars as both Jonah and Malcolm struggle to find racial pride - Jonah lightskinned enough to pass if he chooses, and Malcolm, after learning what he can't do in the white dominated world, wearing his zoot, hair conked, becoming Detroit Red.
Strivers Row is a fast moving book, hard to stop. The CD version is such a treat for the senses, with rich use of slang, bits of songs, names of people and places. This is historical fiction at its best. The two characters. seeming opposites - the preacher and the hustler - provide both tension and balance.
Jonah's father founded the New Jerusalem Church after leading a group of people out of the South, to New York during the Great Migration. The church grew and prospered under its charismatic leader. Jonah has done what he was supposed to do and has become the church's pastor, not entirely sure he wants to be a minister, believing he does not have the power of his father, still alive in his 90s.
While Jonah struggles in his father's shadow, Malcolm struggles to become a man in the absence of his father. He is intelligent and charming but learns as a young boy that despite his abilities, his dream of becoming a lawyer is not possible. He leaves Michigan, first for Boston, and then, working as a dining car porter, arrives in Harlem. He works at Small's for a while, then runs numbers for West Indian Archie. He meets and believes he loves a white club singer. He smokes a lot of dope. And he is visited by a little brown man named Elijah who comes and goes mysteriously.
I loved this book. I felt completely immersed in its world. Every character was fully drawn and believable. It is still hard to believe that Jonah never actually lived. And I have mixed feelings about Malcolm; author Kevin Baker has fictionalized the early years of Malcolm X, especially his interest in the Nation of Islam. This works as a piece of fiction, but I found it disconcerting that one of the two main characters was completely made up while the other was a real person, distorted.
March 21, 2011
Strivers Row by Kevin Baker, the final volume of his “City of Fire” trilogy, pulses with Harlem jazz and Lindy hoppers, World War II, and race riots. Milton Dove, son of the interracial couple in the second book, Paradise Alley, had founded the Church of New Jerusalem, built it with the faith and hard work of his people, bought the big house on Strivers Row in Harlem and brought up his son Jonah, ever in the shadow of the famous preacher, to carry it on. Malcolm Little, a colored boy already too big for his petty hustling life, happens on Jonah and his wife while serving sandwiches on a train. Drunk white soldiers are threatening the couple with violence, so Malcolm turns the sandwich box into a weapon, fights off the whole bunch of them, calls the MPs, and tops off his performance with a swan dive into Buzzards Bay in full view of all the passengers and train crew. Drawing from history, Baker gives us 1940's New York – Malcolm X as a young hustler, the Savoy Ballroom, the Collyer brothers' mansion, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., the A train – all the color and the drama, along with his imaginary Jonah with his crisis of faith.
August 21, 2014
A wonderfully-written historical novel set in Harlem during WWII. In vivid detail Baker tells the story of the dramatic early life of Malcolm X--depicting, among other things, his coming to terms with his mother's madness and his hustling in the vibrant underground world of wartime Harlem. I love the way that he interweaves Malcolm's narrative with Jonah's. Jonah is the reluctant heir to one of Harlem's historic black churches. Over the course of the novel he struggles with his call, with being a light-skinned black man who can pass for "white," and in his marriage to his seemingly perfect preacher's wife. By the end of the novel Jonah steps into his ministry and becomes a leading voice against racism and prejudice in a riot-torn Harlem. A very memorable read that has me thinking about how disenfranchised people fight back against systemic injustice.
The edition I read also has a suggested walking tour in the back with notes Baker provides. Given how gentrified Harlem has become it's probably harder and harder to find very many traces of the great Harlem of the first half of the 20th century Baker re-imagines in his novel.
The edition I read also has a suggested walking tour in the back with notes Baker provides. Given how gentrified Harlem has become it's probably harder and harder to find very many traces of the great Harlem of the first half of the 20th century Baker re-imagines in his novel.
June 30, 2012
I think Kevin Baker is one of the finest writers of historical fiction I've ever encountered. He is both a great storyteller, and an astute historical researcher. One of the potential pitfalls of historical fiction is that it's all too easy for a writer to sacrifice story in order to accommodate all the fascinating and important facts that have surfaced in the course of research. Baker successfully avoids that trap in all three volumes of his City of Fire trilogy. He is able to weave an at times almost mystical, yet wholly credible, account of Harlem in the 1940s without, apparently, making anything up. I was prepared to find his idea of using the young Malcolm X (Malcolm Little, as he was known at the time) as a primary character to be too ambitious, and to fall flat; I was wrong. The character of Malcolm is very sensitively drawn, with a judicious mixture of bravado and naivete. Although the book stands on its own, it does have particularly strong ties to the first volume of the trilogy, Paradise Alley, which I would recommend reading first.
August 9, 2007
Author Kevin Baker takes and immense risk in his latest novel - Striver's Row. This is risk is not about the subject, nor time period and location. Rather it is his choice of main character. In his latest installment Baker provides a glimpse in to the mindset of a young, cavalier, Malcolm Little - the man who would later be known to the world as Malcolm X. As we discover the marvels of 1940's Harlem through the eyes of young Malcolm we are introduced to the makings of this future civil rights leader. Likewise, we follow the life of a Baptist Preacher named Jonah, who struggles with the notion of abandoning his flock and race. The book is a wonderful excercise in imagination and ingenuity. The insertion of historical facts and figures, ands to the general atmosphere of the story. While it slow in tempo during the the third act, it is quickly regained and thouroughly followed through. All in all, it is an excellent and inventive story that is worth a read.
Read
February 5, 2009The novel is daring in capturing the mood and history of New York's blacks, particularly since the author is white. Relying on sources including The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Baker melds fact and fiction to paint a vibrant portrait of pre?civil rights America. The period details, the descriptions of Jonah's "passing" in white locales, and Baker's incisive depiction of racism's psychological damage stand out. Yet some critics saw this panoramic history as too ambitious while at the same time falling into the conventional; some felt that this era is still too sensitive to examine objectively. Either way, Strivers Row captures a Harlem whose glitter masked its racial violence.
This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.
April 21, 2008
A complex fictionalized history of Harlem (NY) in the 1940s
during the world war 2.
Begins with Imaginary encounter between Malcolm Little and Jonah Dove
whos wife is being harassed by soldiers on a train. Malcolm
(insinuates in some ways to be a young Malcolm X (but not him as far as I know) intervenes and gets soldiers thrown off the train.
Chapters alternate between the character of Malcolm Little struggling to make it and enjoy life in the Harlem of the day and Jonah, a deeply self doubting leader of a prestigious church in Harlem ) as time goes on, and how their lives intertwine occasionally after the incident on the train.
So full of things I cannot begin to describe. I recommend it
. A fairly accurate view of politics though it appears
cynical.
during the world war 2.
Begins with Imaginary encounter between Malcolm Little and Jonah Dove
whos wife is being harassed by soldiers on a train. Malcolm
(insinuates in some ways to be a young Malcolm X (but not him as far as I know) intervenes and gets soldiers thrown off the train.
Chapters alternate between the character of Malcolm Little struggling to make it and enjoy life in the Harlem of the day and Jonah, a deeply self doubting leader of a prestigious church in Harlem ) as time goes on, and how their lives intertwine occasionally after the incident on the train.
So full of things I cannot begin to describe. I recommend it
. A fairly accurate view of politics though it appears
cynical.
April 4, 2013
I had high hopes for this novel. What a compelling era.
But what a flop.
It was disjointed and annoying in its structure. I am generally perfectly okay with bouncing among narrators, but this did not work for me. The transitions were not smooth and there were gaps in the characters' stories that might not have occurred in a different structure.
I believe, too, that the lack of a sympathetic character was fatal. I couldn't bring myself to care for the selfish, violent, careless, and unambitious people in this book.
I realize it is the third in a series and maybe reading the whole series would give a different impression, but this book did not make me want to go back to the beginning to see.
But what a flop.
It was disjointed and annoying in its structure. I am generally perfectly okay with bouncing among narrators, but this did not work for me. The transitions were not smooth and there were gaps in the characters' stories that might not have occurred in a different structure.
I believe, too, that the lack of a sympathetic character was fatal. I couldn't bring myself to care for the selfish, violent, careless, and unambitious people in this book.
I realize it is the third in a series and maybe reading the whole series would give a different impression, but this book did not make me want to go back to the beginning to see.
February 16, 2013
If you are a fan of this genre (historical fiction, more specifically 40s NYC, Harlem) this is worth reading. But personally I didn't feel this was nearly as good as the first two in the trilogy. Part of the reason may be that the bar was set very high - Dreamland and Paradise Alley are both phenomenal.
I didn't find the stories nor the main characters of this book nearly as compelling. That said, if Kevin Baker wrote a fourth book in this series I wouldn't hesitate to read it.
If you are new to this author I would start with the other two. But if u like his work, you will enjoy this as well.
I didn't find the stories nor the main characters of this book nearly as compelling. That said, if Kevin Baker wrote a fourth book in this series I wouldn't hesitate to read it.
If you are new to this author I would start with the other two. But if u like his work, you will enjoy this as well.
October 3, 2013
This historical novel is a fascinating read about Harlem and the people in it from the early 20th century to post WWII. A large part of the book is concerned with the different shades of skin of the African Americans and how they treated each other. One of the main characters is Malcolm Smith who later becomes Malcolm X. The other main character is a very light-skinned preacher - so light he is often mistaken for white. He wrestles with this and finally makes a decision. But the over-riding theme of the book is Harlem and what it was like through the different decades.
This book would make a great HBO series!
This book would make a great HBO series!
October 23, 2007
More serious than the first two books of this trilogy, and not quite as fun a read, but like the previous two, an amazing recreation of the times they portray, In this case, it's Harlem in the 1940s. Some people have complained that a white guy wrote this book, but to me it's irrelevant. Baker knows the history, the vernacular, the man-on-the-street views and feelings of people of that time, and tells his story with detail and assurance. WHo cares if he's black or white, he's captured the times brilliantly.
November 20, 2008
This book is the 3rd of a historical fiction trilogy writted by Kevin Baker--I will add the other 2 soon. They all take place in New York City. This particular one takes place in Harlem during the time of Malcolm X (coinciding wonderfully with our recent victory!). I am actually listening to this book on CD (which I LOVE-I can actually get things done AND 'read'). I highly recommend this one along with the others.
August 11, 2011
This book probably deserves more than the two stars I am giving it, because Kevin Baker is a talented and driven author, but I just could not bring myself to finish it. Perhaps I picked it up at the wrong time in my reading life, and perhaps I would have finished it at a later date if it wasn't due back at the library. Who knows?
If you are into historical fiction, especially stories that take place in New York City in the 40's, you would probably be into this book.
If you are into historical fiction, especially stories that take place in New York City in the 40's, you would probably be into this book.
March 21, 2008
The third of Baker's trilogy of novels about New York. This one tells the story of a Adam Clayton Powell character and of Malcom X. It's daring, and sometimes it feels like it looses it's focus. Anyone who loves The Autobiography of Malcom X ought to read this. All of his books are very well researched. A great read.
October 6, 2008
Excellent historical novel about Harlem, "passing" and being black in the first half of the century, although it must be said that the author is a white man and the true experience can only be guessed at. The protagonist is narrowly based on the man who would become known as Malcolm X. Excellent writing.
May 12, 2011
I didn't finish this audio book. The story of Malcolm X, before he was Malcolm X, was something I thought would be intriguing. I tired of the story and some of the details were frankly disturbing, so I chose to give it up. Perhaps an abridged version might have been better for me. It does provide important insight into terrible racial prejudice in the 1940s.
June 23, 2016
This is a story of two black men in WWII Harlem, one a minister and the other a "hustler." The author did a tremendous amount of research to bring this era in Harlem to life. Although I did not read the first two books of this trilogy, this book stands on its own. Sometimes the book was tedious, but I'm glad I stuck with it.
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