essay #1 (268 hits)
Category: NoneRating: -1.16 on 8 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by briokid911.at.hotmail.com (View user info) at 2008-03-04 00:11:15 EST
"Harlem in Perspective."
Attempting to compare and contrast James Baldwin's 1948 essay "Fifth Avenue, Uptown" with
Duke Ellington's sing-song poetic commentary, "Harlem" is an especially daunting task. The first
problem, of course, is that they are both so firmly the truth. They are very personal
perspectives, and each lends its own voice to the plights and triumphs of Harlem. There are
obviously many differences in style and theme, but they are fundamentally the same story, told on
a different day by different men. In order to truly understand the differences of the two, they
must be broken down seperately.
James Baldwin's "Fifth Avenue, Uptown" is a poignant and harrowing account of stepping
into the darkness of Harlem. From the very first line of the piece, he sees a blurry, stunted
version of the sidewalks and streets with which he was once so familiar. It is nostalgic and more
than a little embittered in its tone. He writes with regret and a certain "There went the
neighborhood" shame. Paragraph four describes a crumbling mess of junkies, extremists,
unemployables, and ghosts. He goes on to lament the lives of the working-class men and women
who "Work in a white man's world all day and come home in the evening to this fetid block (Para.
5)" He seems torn between his resentment for the unemployed but politicized "Moslems" and his
shame at the blue collar community's subordination to white business. All in all, Baldwin
recognizes the distance between his own idyllic past and the bleak prospect of progress in the
black ghetto, and his sorrow is apparent.
Duke Ellington's vision of Harlem swings in the other direction. He sees a colorful
melting pot of soulful and beautiful culture; a bright smile of a neighborhood with a cool bob in
its step. There is a certain tongue-in-cheek machismo in his ramble as he speaks of
the "especially handsome people who live there." It's very much a musician's work in it's
delusion and optimism. He paints a picture of one very specific version of the neighborhood, one
in which even the most sinister elements of the counter culture are grinning and twirling watch
chains. The structure is that of a conversation over cigarette smoke and iced liquor. In the
end, when he says "This is Harlem," it is a crushing statement, and one is inclined to believe the
man behind it.
I grew up in Park Place, a neighborhood right off of I-45 South and just south of the
Loop. It is a predominately working-class mexican neighborhood bordered by a bayou and a
freeway. River Drive, which was my street, winds slowly and kindly toward the green edge of the
lazy drifting waterway. There is a city park at the entrance of the barrio with basketball courts
and bums sleeping on top of picnic tables, sometimes with their needles or pipes strewn in the
dirt below them. During the summer it was impossible to be indoors because of the wrathful
cooking spoons of our frustrated, brassy southern mothers. Barefoot baseball in the street with
the five or so other kids was the usual fare, though some days we would ride our bikes to the
mexican restaraunt at the freeway and watch the fat lady roll out fresh tortillas in the window.
My experience was very southern and very hispanic. I recall my mother watching the news in
spanish (she was fluent, a bilingual probation officer) while my father played Buddy Holly records
and smoked cigarettes while tenderizing steaks for the frypan. There wasn't much Harlem
dissonance or soul, but there was certainly that underlying feeling of innocence both attained and
lost. I have a feeling that if one were to walk down a cracked sidewalk in any lower/middle class
neighborhood in any major city, one would experience the same kind of dichotomy between social
neglect and unabashed nostalgia.
In the end, each man's individual interpretation of his past is simultaneously opposing
and oddly similar. The circumstances, settings, and populations may differ greatly, but the
gauntlet of emotions and sensory affectations are inevitable in any place. Duke Ellington would
know nothing about the smell of funnel cake at my church's bazaar, but he could tell you in a
heartbeat about a smell of his own that triggers the ache of youth. James Baldwin is completely
ignorant of the thorny bush of dewberries creeping up the fence in my backyard, but I'll bet he
could drag his fingers along the brick of his own home to this day and recall a thousand stories
of his childhood. It is nice to not be alone in the alternating sadness and joy of our respective
pasts.
User Reviews
Submitted by Ltap (user info) at 2008-03-04 09:15:47 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
Hello, PerkMan. It's nice to see your lines spaced so far apart today.
Submitted by HurtByTheSun (user info) at 2008-03-04 06:13:05 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
You need more than remedial classes.
Submitted by billiam5billion (user info) at 2008-03-04 03:56:17 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
nah, I just started college real late in life and this was the first essay for my remedial english class. more to come.
Submitted by PepsiCoke (user info) at 2008-03-04 03:27:43 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
This sounds like one of those passages you would read in the critical reading section of the SAT. That's a compliment, I think. You should get an A+ on this if you're in high school. I just hope you didn't write this for fun.
Submitted by billiam5billion (user info) at 2008-03-04 02:39:09 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
thanks
Submitted by Sacrilicious (user info) at 2008-03-04 00:37:57 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
I liked the middle part about the character's neighborhood and upbringing.
Submitted by Spacecat (user info) at 2008-03-04 00:25:43 EST (#)
Ranking: -1
haiii
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2008-03-04 00:15:41 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
fuck off