Harlem Summer

by Mary Elizabeth Vroman

A sixteen year old African American boy from Alabama spends a summer in Harlem and find race relations much more complex than he had anticipated.

127 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1970

Reviews

[Nadine Keels · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recently watched Bright Road, a 1953 drama with a predominantly Black American cast. The film was adapted from an award-winning short story by Mary Elizabeth Vroman, "See How They Run." When I found out that the author—who was also one of the film's writers and who became the first Black woman member of the Screen Writers Guild—wrote a young adult novel as well, I went hunting for a copy of it.

Harlem Summer isn't as warm of a story as Bright Road. But both works explore themes of race and poverty, and they feature bright Black boys finding hope.

As the YA novel is from 1967, I found it particularly interesting to read the parts discussing racial issues and some Black social and civil rights leaders. While today's novels discuss those events and people as history, and they appear in historical fiction, the angle in this book is different. Given that the United States was in the midst of the civil rights movement at the time, much of what the author is writing about are rather current events, viewed through teenaged John's eyes.

(However, I must point out that while I'm speaking of a specific phase of the movement in the 1950s and '60s, the overall fight for civil rights in America is still happening, including where race is concerned.)

I appreciate that this story asks serious questions without attempting to spoon-feed the reader with answers to all of them. It's the kind of novel meant to make readers think for themselves. I also appreciate the story's level of complexity in exploring friend and family relationships.

Now, I wasn't sure that the speech of all of the story's young characters, including some thuggish ones, always reflected how they'd speak as real people. The young folks' grammar occasionally sounded a little too exact/correct and formal to me, though I've no way of knowing if that's on account of the author or if those were editing decisions on the publisher's part.

I'm also a little sad that although the author was contracted to write a following novel to make this a series, that novel went either unwritten or unfinished. Vroman passed away in her early 40s, the same year Harlem Summer was published.

Nevertheless, the story's messages about everyday people doing their best and about fighting to make life better are still relevant. I'm grateful that I found out about this book, and I feel pretty honored after having the chance to read it.

Note:
• some accounts and scenes of violence
• use of the N-word in one scene; the rest of the novel's language is kept to a "PG" level
• no explicit sexual content

[Lilli]

don't know how useful it'll be for my thesis but i'm very happy to have read it

[Teresa Orlandi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Starts out slow, but gets better and great ending.

[Jake · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read in a very casual, diary-like way that painted a great picture of what it was like back in the 1960s.