Darktown Strutters: A Novel

by Wesley Brown, W.T. Lhamon Jr.

Darktown Strutters is the story of Jim Crow, a remarkable dancer, born in slavery, who performs in minstrel shows, South and North, during the furious times of pre- and post- Civil War America. Touching, harrowing, and inspiring, Darktown Strutters is a unique novel of courage and pride from the author of Tragic Magic .

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction

248 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1994

About the author

Novelist, playwright, and teacher Wesley Brown was born and raised in Harlem, NYC. His work includes three acclaimed novels (Tragic Magic, Darktown Strutters, and Push Comes to Shove) and three produced plays (Boogie Woogie and Booker T, Life During Wartime, and A Prophet Among Them).

Brown's work often reflects his political involvement. In 1965, Brown worked with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party on voting registration. In 1968, he became a member of the Black Panther Party in Rochester, New York. In 1972, he was sentenced to three years in prison for refusing induction into the armed services and spent eighteen months in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary.

He is Professor Emeritus at Rutgers University, where he taught for 27 years. He currently teaches literature at Bard College at Simon's Rock, and lives in Spencertown, New York.

Reviews

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is Brown's bomb in the beehive, a seemingly benign form of hair-do that, used correctly, is a weapon of (apologies for the Cute Cringe) crass destruction. Whether it be Estelle Bennett's, whose beehive put sister Ronnie Spector's to shame, or Cindy Wilson's is immaterial as the results are the same: the undetected-but-incoming detonation of an explosive device. So, while squares (yep, I said squares) titter and mumble about the person with three-feet of hair Aqua-Netted toward glory, little do they know that the ticking they're consciously ignoring is the bomb's wind-up clock signaling that you are 100% and goddam absolutely fucked. Time's up, to be overly literal. Boom—just flame and shrapnel and skull-flesh ripping through the beauty parlor in one perfect, subversive act of rebellion guaranteed to reorient the thinking of at least a few. Or, as I said, the bomb in the beehive.

Here, Brown rocks an absolutely fucking IMMACULATE beehive, true John Waters quality stuff. If'n you haven't figured out what this has to do with a book taking place amidst the heyday of 'pickaninnies,' Jim Crow, and minstrelsy, I don't know how to make it any clearer for you, but you may want to consider the very real possibility that you, in fact, are a square, baby. Lose those sharp edges, kiss me ('til it feels like a hit).

[Stacia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I randomly found this book in a used bookstore & didn't know anything about it. I guess it would be classed as historical fiction, set mostly around the Black man "Jim Crow" & his work in a minstrel show that included other Black performers as well as white performers in blackface. The time periods are pre-, during-, and post-Civil War. I found it both fascinating & harrowing as it has a lot to show/say about racism in America, being relevant both past & present.

Rabbit holes led me down various paths including learning more about minstrel shows during that time period, Tom Rice, Jump Jim Crow, even the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia (in Michigan), & the Dreadnought hoax (which includes a form of blackface in which Virginia Woolf was involved).

[Ryan Mishap · Rating 4 out of 5]

After the first two pages, I was totally immersed in this tale of travelling troupes of performers set in pre-and post-Civil War U.S. I'm going to have to read it again to get all the symbolism and ideas thrown out about identity and race (and some, being white, I will never get), but the characters are complicated and real. The times are racist and scary. The laughter is always there on the edge of tragedy, and the book is fabulous.

[Mary Rizzo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meditation on American popular culture's construction of racial (and other identities) told through the story of minstrel dancer Jim Crown before and after the Civil War..

[Seth Shimelfarb-Wells · Rating 4 out of 5]

The inverse of Beloved with a similar level of regard for its inhabitants (yet at the same time incomparable). Historical fiction about the intersection of movement, performance, bondage, gender, oral traditions, natality, and literal state to state movement. Brown had a pretty rigorous gender politic for a blackcishet dude in the 90’s. This book was quite upsetting at times and at the same time carefully and beautifully humorous. Jubilee and sorrow are particularly special characters. The first 40 pages are significant in terms of performance as a catalyst for material freedom struggles. Makes me want to read love&theft soon. The descriptions that Rice comes to of his own construction of self on pg24/25 many a people would benefit reading. What is freedom?

[John Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best American novels I have read.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very grim book, completely believable.