Free Harlem Nocturne by Farah Jasmine Griffin

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    HARLEM NOCTURNE:
    â€œA definitive and arresting account of three women artists. Farah Griffin gathers an array of Harlem stories and incorporates them into a wonderfully written and well-grounded narrative describing the artistic experiences and everyday lives of these three unique women. Harlem Nocturne is both intimate and comprehensive in its exploration of black women’s creativity during World War II. A rich history that investigates the imagination and originality of black women’s expressive culture in mid-20th century America, this book is timely and important.”
    â€”Deborah Willis, author of Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present
    â€œFarah Jasmine Griffin has written, beautifully and powerfully, about the complex intersection of gender, race, and place in the lives of three extraordinary black women. In her delicate hands, Pearl Primus, Ann Petry, and Mary Lou Williams stand as ‘representative women,’ exemplars of imagination at work and of the daunting task of the art of living in trying political times. As we get to know them, their lives narrate a distinctive story that offers us advice about how to live with courage, power, and beauty.”
    â€”Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., Princeton University, author of In A Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America
    â€œReaders who accept Farah Jasmine Griffin’s invitation to imagine Harlem in the 1940s through the eyes of three remarkable women—Pearl Primus, Ann Petry, and Mary Lou Williams—will be richly rewarded. Wearing her erudition lightly, Griffin brilliantly illuminates a place and time of enormous hope and achievement. Harlem Nocturne is an inspiring and inspired study of the artistic imagination in conversation with an American democracy tainted by injustice. It is, quite simply, a joy to read.”
    â€”Gayle Wald, author of Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe
    â€œAs elegant and dynamic as the figures that it chronicles, Harlem Nocturne is a groundbreaking cultural history of three black women artists at work in 1940s New York City. Farah Jasmine Griffin is a dazzling storyteller whose lyrical prose evokes the musical cadences of a Toni Morrison novel. Her study beckons us to soar with dancer-choreographer Pearl Primus, to walk with novelist Ann Petry as she chronicles the streets of Harlem, and to roll with pioneering jazz musician and composer Mary Lou Williams as each woman made art that laid down the blueprint for the modern Civil Rights Movement. By placing their lives in conversation with one another, Harlem Nocturne illuminates the myriad ways that Primus, Petry and Williams helped to shape the social, political, and cultural landscape of their city. As much a love letter to New York as it is to the heroism of these artists, Griffin’s study is a work of incandescent beauty.”
    â€”Daphne A. Brooks, Princeton University, author of Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850–1910
    â€œAn engaging biography of three remarkable women who taught art to reflect life.”
    â€”Kirkus Reviews

HARLEM
    Nocturne

HARLEM
    Nocturne
    WOMEN ARTISTS &
    PROGRESSIVE
    POLITICS DURING
    WORLD WAR II
    Farah Jasmine Griffin
    BASIC CIVITAS
    A MEMBER OF THE PERSEUS BOOKS GROUP
    New York

Copyright © 2013 by Farah Jasmine Griffin
    Published by Basic Civitas Books,
    A Member of the Perseus Books Group
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