Pilgrim’s progress

A young writer unfurls the history and mythology of the ‘cultural capital of black America’

January 23, 2011|Danielle Evans, Globe Correspondent

In the Ralph Ellison essay from which Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts’s book, “Harlem is Nowhere,’’ takes its title, “nowhere’’ is a precursor to madness. Ellison writes: “The phrase ‘I’m nowhere,’ expresses the feeling borne in upon many negroes that they have no stable, recognized place in society. One’s identity drifts in a capricious reality in which even the most commonly held assumptions are questionable.’’

It is this Harlem that Rhodes-Pitts explores, the Harlem in which the instability of common assumptions results in equal parts beauty and chaos. Part memoir, part travelogue, part literary criticism, and part history lesson, “Harlem is Nowhere’’ chronicles Rhodes-Pitts’s life in Harlem, a place she moved to in search of the Harlem she’d read about for so long. By the time Rhodes-Pitts is jokingly dubbed by a friend “Miss Great Migration 2002,’’ Harlem has to compete not only with the mythology of “commonly held assumptions,’’ but with decades of its own mythology.

“Harlem is Nowhere’’ eloquently wades through this mythology, evoking the neighborhood’s historical sense of both danger and promise, or as Rhodes-Pitts puts it, “hyperbolic Harlem, the cultural capital of black America or its epicenter (likening the place to a natural disaster).’’ It is this hyperbolic Harlem that has brought the author herself and many people before her here, but it is this same hyperbolic Harlem that shows up at a Community Board meeting later in the book. By way of explaining a regulation that permits luxury condo developers to trade required affordable housing units for ground floor arts venues, a representative from the city planning department says: “We’ve been told that arts and culture are important up here, so there are going to be restaurants and cultural venues.’’ It is, Rhodes-Pitts’s narrative frequently implies, a slippery slope from the Harlem of dreams to Harlem by force.