(read aloud)
This excellent book is about the author's grandmother. She is a worthy subject. She is a brilliant, gifted person who overcame barriers of race and gender to achieve amazing national and international prominence. Yet a main thread is that through no fault of her own she failed to go as far as she deserved.
The book is much more. Carefully written and deeply researched, it is an account of an era and of a part of a city, Harlem.
Carter uses the terminology of the time - 'colored, negro' - to good effect and his own coinage, 'darker nation,' is evocative and useful. There is no hyperbole, for with Carter's skillful prose calmly sketching the facts of the time, there is no need. Vague memories and impressions of those times come to life and spawn an immediacy and currency that is almost painful.
I can't imagine how this book could be better. I wish I had read this years ago. I have read most of the author's fiction (see above).
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