Rough Amusements: The True Story of A'Lelia Walker, Patroness of the Harlem Renaissance's Down-Low Culture

by Ben Neihart

From acclaimed novelist Ben Neihart, a vibrant portrait of gay Harlem's most memorable A'Lelia Walker.

When A'Lelia Walker died in 1931 after a midnight snack of lobster and chocolate cake washed down with champagne, it marked the end of one of the most striking social careers in New York's history. The daughter of rags-to-riches multi-millionaire Madame C.J. Walker (the washerwoman who marketed the most successful straightening technique for African American hair), A'Lelia was America's first black poor little rich girl, using her inheritance to throw elaborate, celebrity-packed parties in her Westchester Mansion and her 136th Street would-be salon, 'Dark Tower'.

In Rough Amusements , third in Bloomsbury's Urban Historicals series, Neihart takes us into the heart of A'Lelia's world-gay Harlem in the 1920s. In tracing its cultural antecedents, he delves into the sexual subculture of nineteenth-century New York, exploring mixed-race prostitution; the bachelorization of New York society; French Balls ("the most sophisticated forum for testing the boundaries of urban sexual behavior"); and The Slide (New York's most depraved nineteenth-century bar). Using A'Lelia's lavish parties as a jumping-off point, Neihart traces the line connecting Davy Crockett's world without women to Walt Whitman's boundless love of beautiful men to A'Lelia's cultivation of the racial, social, and sexual risk that defined the Harlem Renaissance.

160 pages, Hardcover

First published April 2, 2003

Reviews

[Gwen Lester-Cunningham · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a big disappointment. I'd hoped to learn more about A'Lelia Walker, but it failed to deliver.

[Jim Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started reading this book thinking it was going to be a biography of A’lelia Walker, Harlem Renaissance’s wealthiest black patron. But it turned out this is a disjointed historical novel that is more concerned with the history of gay spaces in NY than it is to about the flamboyant daughter of Madam CJ Walker. A white drag queen, Jennie June, takes over the book quickly and recites the history of gay life in The Bowery and Harlem going back to the 1890’s. The dialogue is very stilted (“And then what happened?”) in the author’s attempts to get all his research into the book. While I learned enough to keep reading, I felt like there was a bait and switch going on here as Ms. Walker disappeared from the narrative for large chunks of the book.

[Donut · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book feels like the start of something because it does not strike a good balance between fact and fiction. I would love to learn more now about the down-low culture of the Harlem Renaissance, and A'Lelia Walker and Jennie June especially, but I wish I'd already found what I am now curious about in this book.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

More than a book about the elaborate life style of the daughter of Madam CJ Walker, a historical revealing of the lifestyle that was supposed to be a secret to those who lived in front of the curtain. Ben Neihart takes he curtain down and exposes historical reality. This book left me with the question “really “?

[Sonia · Rating 1 out of 5]

A real disappointment. So much potential in the historical sources, so much license for creativity, and such a lame, flaccid delivery. I learned some stuff and might have given two stars but for the mess of Latin used to describe a horrific rape. Legible (to me) but full of mistakes, some of which are the autocorrect variety. What is wrong with editors that they don't attend to such things?