Coverage of The Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead

• Sept. 17: Colson Whitehead’s New Novel Is a Delight - Carolyn Kellogg - Shondaland

• Sept. 16: Whitehead’s ‘Harlem Shuffle’ a crime story and a love song - Colette Bancroft - Tampa Bay Times

• Sept. 15: Whitehead's Latest Gives Readers A Half-Crook You'll Wholly Love - Denny S. Bryce - NPR

• Sept. 15: Colson Whitehead On His Crime Novel 'Harlem Shuffle' - NPR

• Sept. 14: Colson Whitehead just wants to have fun - Steph Cha - LA Times

• Sept. 14: Whitehead proves once again that he’s a master of reinvention - Ron Charles - Washington Post

• Sept. 14: Whitehead on Why He Wrote a Heist Novel to Tell the Story of New York - Dwyer Murphy - CrimeReads

• Sept. 14: Why a Heist Novel Was the Best Way to Tell the Story of New York - Dwyer Murphy - LitHub

• Sept. 14: Colson Whitehead gives himself permission to write anything — and anywhere - Seija Rankin - EW

• Sept 14: Whitehead Masters a New Genre: The Crime Caper - Adrienne Westenfeld - Esquire

• Sept. 14: How Colson Whitehead Writes About Our Big Wild Country - Ezra Klein - New York Times

• Sept. 14: Whitehead’s Warmhearted Novel of a 1960s Crime Caper in Harlem - Karan Mahajan - New York Times

• Sept. 14: Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead - Olivia Fricot - Booktopia

• Sept. 13: Colson Whitehead thrives in the moral grays of Harlem Shuffle - Danette Chavez - AV Club

• Sept. 13: Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead review: A zingy social drama - Ian Thomson - Standard 

• Sept. 13: Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead — black geographies - Autumn Womack - Financial Times

• Sept. 13: Whitehead recreates 1960s Harlem in hard-boiled crime novel - Mark Athitakis - USA Today

• Sept. 13: In Harlem Shuffle, Colson Whitehead Departs From Heavy Themes - Noel King - NPR

• Sept. 12: Take a look at Whitehead's other novels, too - Stuart Miller - Orange County Register

• Sept. 12: Colson Whitehead - Elizabeth Day - BBC

• Sept 12: Colson Whitehead Is Still Just Doing His Weird Thing - Laura Miller - Slate

• Sept. 11: Whitehead: ‘It’s not my job to transform people’s psyches’ - Niamh Donnelly - Independent

• Sept. 10: 'Harlem Shuffle,' by Colson Whitehead - Hamilton Cain - Star Tribune

• Sept. 10: In Colson Whitehead’s New Novel, a Crime Grows in Harlem - Janet Maslin - New York Times

• Sept. 10: What Is Crime in a Country Built on It? - Jennifer Wilson - The Atlantic

• Sept. 9: How Colson Whitehead Pulled It Off - Craig Jenkins - Vulture

• Sept. 9: New York Is Now - Omari Weeks - Bookforum

• Sept. 9: Latest book lets novelist Colson Whitehead ‘have a bit more fun’ - Evan F. Moore - Chicago Sun-Times

• Sept. 9: Criminal acts in Colson Whitehead’s ‘Harlem Shuffle’ - Walton Muyumba - Boston Globe

• Sept. 9: Colson Whitehead Plays It Safe - Art Edwards - Book & Film Globe

• Sept. 8: Colson Whitehead Reinvents Himself, Again - Alexandra Alter - New York Times

• Sept. 7: Harlem Shuffle offers fast-moving heist caper, recreation of bygone NYC - Douglas Perry - Oregon Live

• Sept. 6: Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead review – a zinging wiseguy noir thriller - Colin Grant - The Guardian

• Sept. 4: The Whitehead Way - Charles Finch - Air Mail

• Sept. 3: Colson Whitehead’s ‘Harlem Shuffle’ - Clifford Thompson - Wall Street Journal

• Aug. 24: Harlem Shuffle: time travel to seething Harlem - Betty - News.in-24

• Aug. 24: 6 books to read in September 2021 - Danette Chavez et al - AV Club 

• Aug. 15: 19 Must-Read Fiction Books Coming This Fall - Laurie Muchnick - Kirkus

• Aug. 1: Harlem Shuffle - Michael Pucci - Library Journal

• July  19: The Theresa Job - Colson Whitehead - The New Yorker

• July 19: Colson Whitehead on Historical Heists - Deborah Treisman - The New Yorker

• June 16: Harlem Shuffle -- Kirkus

• June 1: Harlem Shuffle -- Booklist

• Apil 20: Harlem Shuffle - Publishers Weekly

• Feb. 2: Energetic Cover of Colson Whitehead’s Upcoming Novel Harlem – Lucy Feldman - TIME

Related:

• Coverage of books, authors & special topics

• Notebook on the works of Colson Whitehead 

Ralph Ellison, Malcolm X, Farah Jasmine Griffin, and black fathers as muses

As some of you may know, I wrote a book about bad men and creativity, where I noted how rebellious, outspoken, militant, and even troubling men sometimes serve as important muses for writers and other creators. I probably could have written a full-length book about the works inspired by black fathers -- a subject or set of subjects that have been motivating forces within and leading to many important works. 

I was recently thinking about three figures: Ralph Ellison, Malcolm X, and Farah Jasmine Griffin. 

In different ways, they were deeply influenced by their fathers, more specifically their thinking about their fathers, and what's especially noteworthy is that they were quite young when they lost these men in their lives. Ellison lost his father when he was three years ago. Malcolm lost his father when he was six. Griffin was nine when she lost her father. 

Those losses were devastating. 

But, those children and then adults always kept their fathers in mind. Read Arnold Rampersad's biography of Ellison, Les Payne and Tamara Payne's biography of Malcolm, and Griffin's memoir Read Until You Understand, and you'll witness folks who are working with and off of their father's memories for decades.  

Ellison's father loved literature and various authors, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, hence he named his son Ralph Waldo Ellison. In commentary on that biography of Ellison, Hilton Als wrote that "Rampersad points out that the loss of Ellison’s father remained a wound in his consciousness for the rest of his life." Fathers and grandfathers pop up in notable ways in Ellison's creative works, and he reflects on his father in essays. 

Earl Little, Malcolm's father, died in 1931. Family members, including one of Malcolm's older brothers who was there to hear the report and see the body, accepted that their father Earl Little died as a result of a tragic accident. But Malcolm, hearing rumors to the contrary, refused to accept the incident as an accident. It was his opinion, expressed throughout his life, that his father was killed by the Klan. 

For years, I believed Malcolm's account, but after the evidence presented by Payne and Payne in their biography that drew on reports from the family, I am inclined to believe their finding that it was indeed a terrible accident that led to Earl Little's death. I do understand though why Malcolm (as well as many others and me) needed to believe that the father of this great black nationalist leader was killed by white domestic terrorists.  

But even if people cannot agree on that fact, we can consider that the loss of a father so early caused Malcolm all kinds of pain and may have led him to seek out father figures, finding one most notably in Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam. Malcolm had a deep, deep connection to Muhammad and for many years considered himself a most devoted follower of the leader. In fact, The Autobiography of Malcolm X was initially going to be a book-length tribute to Muhammad. During the processes of interviews with Alex Haley, however, Malcolm separated from Muhammad's Nation of Islam, and the autobiography took a different turn. 

I've written about Griffin's book and noted the influence of his life on who she was as a childhood reader. Today, she is an accomplished scholar of American and African American literature, jazz, and cultural history. She points out in her memoir the motivating force of her father's early lessons, annotations in books, and book collection, which she studied even more fervently when he died. 

For Ellison, Malcolm, and Griffin, these men Lewis Ellison, Earl Little, and Emerson Griffin, respectively, were crucial muses. 

I could add another one to this mix. Years ago, I read Lewis Porter's biography of John Coltrane. In 1939 Trane, who was 12, lost his father. Porter draws a link between what Coltrane lost and his early engagements with music: 

It was just at this time [when Coltrane's father died] that he began to take up music, playing first the alto horn, then the clarinet, and from the beginning he is said to have practiced continuously, obsessively, as if practicing would bring his father back, or maybe help him to forget his father--as if, by succeeding in music, he could restore stability and control to his life. Perhaps, in a sense, music became his father substitute" (17).   

Listen, I certainly don't want to over-romanticize things. I'm not suggesting that losing a central black man in your life at an early age is an advantage. It's not. It's definitely not. There are countless examples, way too many instances of black children losing their fathers and then the child continuing to lose and fall into deep despair. And poverty.  

The point here is to consider that in some prominent cases we have records of writers, other creators, or their biographers highlighting how black father loss and black father yearning affected consequential thinking and pathways taken by various African Americans. And, the outcomes remind us just how important the presence of these loving, creative, and guiding forces were for their children and families. 

In these cases too, we have opportunities to consider what the loss meant, and with Griffin in particular, we get to hear how a black father's presence and then absence shaped and influenced her approached to education over time. Researchers have made it possible for us to consider what the loss of black fathers meant for Ellison and Malcolm. 

Related: 

• A Notebook on Farah Jasmine Griffin's Read Until You Understand

Barbara McCaskill Week, Criminal podcast, and Black literature

 

Artwork by Julienne Alexander for Criminal 

Look, this week in African American literary studies might as well have been known as McCaskill week. It turns out that over the last couple of days, four of our African American literature courses focused on the Criminal podcast episode "In Plain Sight," featuring scholar Barbara McCaskill discussing the lives and great escape of William and Ellen Craft's escape.

I covered the episode in two of my classes. My colleague Donavan Ramon covered it in his class. And my colleague Elizabeth Cali covered the episode in her class. We're talking somewhere around 80 students in African American literature classes covering a podcast on clever runaway slaves. 

I've followed Criminal for a few years now, and I was surprised and delighted to be driving in my car one day back in 2017, and hear McCaskill's voice on the episode. I was aware of her work for years, and so I was pleased to stumble across her talking about African American literature and former enslaved people in the context of this show on criminals. The presentation here shifted the view of "criminal."  

The "In Plain Sight" episode has McCaskill and Criminal host Phoebe Judge retelling the lives of the Craft's. The two of them escaped bondage through a most inventive scheme. Ellen Craft dressed up as a white man and pretended to be sick and injured, while William Craft played the role of a servant assisting the ill master. 

Even though I knew that they escaped, the storytelling by McCaskill and Judge had me wondering and worried as I listened to the episode. The excitement and intrigue that's presented as well as the important historical information led me to begin assigning the episode in my classes. It has been a mainstay over the last few years. 

Each year, we read excerpts from Frederick Douglass's Narrative. We read poems about slavery by various black poets. We look at runaway slave ads. We study various visual images concerning slavery and abolition. And, we listen to McCaskill and Judge on "In Plain Sight."    

McCaskill elevates the idea of the black literary scholar as storyteller. Too, she offers the new possibility of blending African American literary studies and podcasting. A few years ago, I had not considered including podcasts on my syllabi for my unit on slavery. But now, I couldn't imagine excluding this episode. 

At the end of each unit, I do a poll on what aspect of what we've covered the students enjoyed most. The Narrative? Poetry? Visual images? The episode of Criminal? There's really no contest at this point. The clear winner the last few years has been "In Plain Sight."

Yesterday, I saw Cali and Ramon in the hallway outside our offices, and Cali noted in passing that her students had just covered the episode. I knew that Ramon and I were both covering it. So what a cool coincidence that Cali was too, and that we all three covered it in the same week and span of days.  

Related 

• Literary scholar Barbara McCaskill, the Ellen & William Craft episode, and the art of storytelling

When Farah Jasmine Griffin Discovered Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison is one of our most critically acclaimed writers, and her works have been covered extensively in all kinds of ways. So I was surprised and pleased based on the unique way that Farah Jasmine Griffin covered Sula (1973) in her book Read Until You Understand. Most articles I read about Morrison's work incline me to think about why and how the novel matters to literary scholars. 

Griffin's treatment, however, prompted me to consider how the novel might have affected the thinking of a young black girl, as Griffin reflects on discovering Sula when she was about thirteen years old. "The girls on my block," wrote Griffin, "spent summer afternoons braiding hair, jumping rope, and exchanging books." One of the books that came into the young Griffin's possession was Morrison's novel. 

Griffin even remembers and presents the 1975 paperback cover of the version of the novel that she had. She mentions the various books she read and her thoughts on them. "But Sula...Sula changed my life," she writes. Morrison was not the first black woman Griffin had read. Yet, "Sula felt like the beginning of a new knowing." She goes on to note:

Here was a world in some ways familiar and in other ways completely different from the one I knew. Here was a language that sounded like the language the women around me spoke, but presented in a way so that I heard its imagery, its beauty, its rhythm. This was the beginning of the written word entering into my consciousness in the way that others imbibed the words of the Bible. From here on, more than any scribe of the Old or New Testament, Morrison would inform my understanding of my family, my history, and the nation that I called home. She would also shape my voice, my juvenile attempts to use language to describe the world around me (198).

There's so much to consider here. But let's first fast forward forty years past the mid-1970s and consider that a little girl inspired by Morrison has become this highly accomplished scholar of African American literature, and she was the inaugural chair of the African American and African Diaspora Studies Department at Columbia University.

You can hang out with guys who cover jazz, rap, or sports, and you'll hear them make these seemingly far out declarations about major figures in a field. Like, remember that time many years ago, when one basketball player said that God put us on Earth so that we'd have the chance to watch Kobe Bryant play basketball. Or, consider someone saying that the most religious thing a human can do is listen to Coltrane's music. And on and on. 

I thought of some of that when I considered Griffin noting that Morrison was more than any of those folks writing in the Old or New Testament. Yes! And whew. 

That passage from Griffin and her writing about Sula in general had me thinking about what effect Morrison could have on a young mind, what it could mean with her work "entering into my consciousness," to use Griffin's words, at a young age. 

I was previously writing about Griffin's discussion of music in the environment of her youth, and now I'm thinking that perhaps Morrison was an influence on the scholar-memoirist working to describe all aspects of that richness of culture and human interactions in Philadelphia during the 1970s and 1980s.   

Later, reflecting on the environment where she grew up, Griffin observes that "we lived in a complex, challenging world that did not center whites--they were a marginal, if ultimately powerful, presence." She realized that her environment resembled "the world of Morrison's novels." In particular, a central black neighborhood in Sula, points Griffin, "is full of fascinating characters, drama, humor, tragedy, and a multitude of beauty" (200). 

These days, when we speak of young black readers, we rightly discuss them in the context of young adult fiction (YA). It's a field that has become increasingly prevalent over the last decade or two. That's really important.

At the same time though, Griffin's discussion of Sula gives us reason to think about what it might mean to put Morrison in the hands of even more young black folks. Or, think of it this way: Read Until You Understand is one possibility for what could happen when an early teen black girl discovering Toni Morrison. 

Related:

• A Notebook on Farah Jasmine Griffin's Read Until You Understand

Farah Jasmine Griffin and the landscape of sound in Philly

One of my favorite sections in Farah Jasmine Griffin's new book Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature (2021) is chapter 8 where she's discussing music. In a book that's primarily about reading and books, it was fascinating to come across this treatment of singers, instrumentalists, and so forth. 

"Here is a departure," writes Griffin to open the chapter, "a brief detour, from the world of books to the landscape of sound." She notes that music was so ubiquitious in the Philadelphia of her youth that she sometimes took it for granted. 

In the chapter, she reflects on the ways music "accompanied everything we did: household chores, family gatherings, sitting outside in the summertime, cookouts in the park." She mentions the radio stations playing all kinds of sounds. "We didn't turn the music on, because it was always on," writes Griffin.

What most intrigued me was her mentioning the ways music was central to so many conversations and idea-sharing and exchanges. Folks in her world debated music, such as the shift in Miles Davis's work, or how the genres were associated with different people. Her dad was into debop, and his mother turned to Gladys Knight. 

At one point, her family owned a resutrant, and the jukebox that was already there included music from "another era," a time period that was much earlier than Griffin's birth. With a mix of old and new songs on the jukebox, she was gaining an expansive sense of sounds, of black music. 

A varied cast of people frequented the family resturant, and music was a uniting force. "We all--gangsters and factory workers, politicans and entrepreneurs, Christians and Muslims--we all listened to and dance to and argued about and discussed the same music" (179). 

Based on her scholarship on jazz, I knew Griffin was into the music. But Read Until You Understand gave me a much broader view of her musical environmental where she emerged. More important, I think her chapter on music serves a purpose similar to autobiographical narratives where black writers discuss their engagements with books. 

Maybe the memoirs of musicians highlight their interests in music, but it was an unusual experience for me to read a black literary scholar reflecting on her background with sounds and witnessing various people talking about, enjoying, and experiencing black music. 

Related:

• A Notebook on Farah Jasmine Griffin's Read Until You Understand 

A Notebook on Farah Jasmine Griffin's Read Until You Understand

Over the past week, I've read and started posting a few write-ups about Farah Jasmine Griffin's book Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature (2021), published by W. W. Norton & Company. 

 

• Ralph Ellison, Malcolm X, Farah Jasmine Griffin, and black fathers as muses

• Farah Jasmine Griffin and the art of mixing genres

• Farah Jasmine Griffin's tribute to and elaboration on a well-read black man 

• Farah Jasmine Griffin, African American literary scholars, and Autobiographical writing

• Farah Jasmine Griffin and the landscape of sound in Philly

• When Farah Jasmine Griffin Discovered Toni Morrison 

Farah Jasmine Griffin, African American literary scholars, and Autobiographical writing

With the publication of her newest book, Farah Jasmine Griffin joins Deborah McDowell, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Imani Perry, and various scholars of African American literature who've produced memoirs and autobiographical writings. 

Here's a roundup of some works:

1994: Colored People: A Memoir by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.  

1996: Leaving Pipe Shopw: Memories of Kin by Deobroah McDowell

1996: Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood by bell hooks

2003: Summer Snow: Reflections from a Black Daughter of the South by Trudier Harris

2007: I Don't Hate the South: Reflections on Faulkner, Family, and the South by Houston A. Baker, Jr.

2012: My Father's Name: A Black Virginia Family after the Civil War by Lawrence P. Jackson

2012: Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City by Carla L. Peterson 

2019: Breathe: A Letter to My Sons by Imani Perry 

2021: Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature by Farah Jasmine Griffin

I'm sure there are even more works that I'm overlooking at the moment. So think of the above as a work-in-progress. 

Poets, journalists, entertainers, and politicians have collectively produced a large body of memoirs and autobiographies. Reading Griffin's book had me thankful, though, for the memoirs and autobiographical works produced by literary scholars. 

Griffin spends considerable time discussing the works of a wide range of black writers, along with the aspects of her upbringing. I appreciated her mixing genres -- literary criticism and memoir -- as she presented so many ideas about black people and culture. 

  

I wish we had multiple narratives from scholars of African American literature about their experiences in the classroom and producing scholarship. Folks like Griffin, McDowell, Gates, Harris, and others have been teaching and writing about black literary art and history for decades, and I imagine they've seen and learned so much that would be useful for us to consider.  And what about those literature professors who've spent their careers teaching at HBCUs? 

There's a certain self-consciousness about black artistic and cultural traditions in Griffin's writing that  will lead me to recommend her book to students interested in memoir, autobiography, and black culture in general. Read Until You Understand is an individual and collective story. It's about this one person, and it's also about her family, her Philadelphia environment, and all these marvelous productions by black people across time and space. In short, Griffin stretches our sense of what's possibile with autobiographical writing.     

Related: 

• A Notebook on Farah Jasmine Griffin's Read Until You Understand  

Farah Jasmine Griffin's tribute to, elaboration on a well-read black man

Over the years, thanks in large part to the many black students I've worked with and the conversations we've had, I've gotten to hear quite a bit about the roles of black men passing along books and educational lessons to younger folks. In the courses I teach comprised of first-year collegiate black men, the discussions of what they've learned from their fathers and uncles are especially prevalent. The young guys will talk about how older black men introduced them to various books or shared unwritten histories with them. 

These stories of how information and ideas were passed along by black men give me unique views of the production of knowledge in our communities. Farah Jasmine Griffin extends my interest in the subject with her book Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature. Griffin's father died when she was nine years old, but he had already instilled a sense of wonder concerning books, reading, and writing with his daughter. 

Most notably, not long before he died, Emerson Maxwell Griffin thought he was going to be sent to prison, so he gave his child books and scribbed notes in the front and margins. In one book, he informed her: "Jazzie, read this book / You may not understand it / At first. But read it and understand" (36). In another book, he wrote a note: "Baby read it until you understand" (36). 

A short time later, he died, and, as Griffin points out, "the notes in the books became even more precious. His hand had touched them, his distinct, careful handwriting contained something of him. He had cared enough to write notes to me" (37).  

Griffin recalls lessons here and there that she picked up from her dad at a young age. Losing him so soon but having the books in the house that he owned meant that she was determined to read those works. (She also learned quite a bit from her mother and others, which I'll take up in a future post). 

The young Griffin learned that her father held Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X in high esteeem, so she did as well. His interest in those figures led her to read about them and learn more about their related and different worldviews. 

Griffin's father taught her "by word and example" that "reading and study were central to our strugle as a people and to my overall development as a human being" (36). Reading the books her father read led her to more and more books and authors, and following those various lines of study led her to seek out and work with various accomplished teachers and mentors.

In high school, she worked in the office of Federal District Court Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, where she catalogued many of the books in his chambers. In undergrad, she worked closely with  the literary scholar Wernor Sollors and the historian Nathan Huggins. In graduate school, she studied with the philosopher Cornel West.

Maybe some of you have asked as I have: what led to the emergence of a brilliant African American literary and Black Studies scholar like Farah Jasmine Griffin? This book provides an answer: a loving, politically-minded and intellectually curious black father. 

Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature is an important touchstone for those of us interested in the transmission of knowledge among African Americans. Similar to those stories about fathers and uncles shared by my students, Griffin's book is, among other things, a tribute to and elaboration on a well-read black man.      

Related 

• A Notebook on Farah Jasmine Griffin's Read Until You Understand