Matt Snediker’s Reviews > Cotton Comes to Harlem > Status Update

The amount of subtle, smart, cynical racial commentary in this, in the small ways people interact, in the mundane ways we pass through our lives, differently, depending on the color of our skin… really brilliant.

A while ago, when Himes described Harlem as a city of 500,000 black people… idk man. Perspective is a hell of a thing. Loving this. Bought ALL SHOT UP today on the strength of this.

The code switching bit when Bud is talking to the cops is really well done. The way this whole thing is cohering, all the Great Migration themes coalescing, all the characters oscillating between gumshoe cartoons and flesh-thick, working class people… really special stuff.

Easy to write this off as just a detective novel, but there’s a lot of Big Ideas tucked away in the corners and the margins that elevates it

Himes sets up this scenario of ghettoized black communities in Northern cities being treated unfairly — prejudiced policing; inegalitarian resource sharing; opportunity hoarding — & seeing only 2 options before them: Back to Africa, or Back to the South. The obvious answer is just to Treat Black People as People, sth these cities refuse to do, but that Himes, in his smart prose, does doggedly, deliberately.

“Let’s split,” Ed said. “Jazz talks too much to me.”


Same, Ed. Same.

“These people were seeking a home - just the same as the Pilgrim Fathers. Harlem is a city of the homeless.
These people had deserted the South because it could never be considered their home. Many had been sent north by the white southerners in revenge for the desegregation ruling. Others had fled, thinking the North was better. But they had not found a home in the North. They had not found a home in America.”

It’s crazy what 1000 years (give or take) of propaganda will do to your sight-unseen preception of Blaxploitation & black crime fiction. Nose-crinkling & little-brothering of a genre bc it centers black liberation fantasies in a country stuck American Dreaming abt black extermination fantasies, acting like its craft is weaker than. Then you watch Shaft & it’s a masterpiece.

Anyway: GREAT read so far. Crackling.