Ocean State Libraries

A deeply affecting memoir, Still Life in Harlem is Eddy L. Harris's insightful look at a neighborhood, both real and metaphorical. He reveals the magic of Harlem, as it becomes home and spirit in his masterful hands. Through his keen perceptions, we enter the images and passions Harlem has always conjured, coming to understand its significance to those who live there and to those who only yearn to come to it. Unforgettably moving, this book chronicles...

The author, a Rhodes scholar and combat veteran, analyzes factors that influenced him as well as another man of the same name and from the same neighborhood who was drawn into a life of drugs and crime and ended up serving life in prison, focusing on the influence of relatives, mentors, and social expectations that could have led either of them on different paths.

For a century Harlem has been celebrated as the capital of black America, a thriving center of cultural achievement and political action. At a crucial moment in Harlem's history, as gentrification encroaches, the author untangles the myth and meaning of Harlem's legacy. Examining the epic Harlem of official history and the personal Harlem that begins at her front door, she introduces us to a wide variety of characters, past and present. At the heart...

"Claudie Wells believes everyone has a talent - everyone except for her. She's growing up in New York City's Harlem neighborhood during the 1920s. Her world is filled with writers and poets, painters and sculptors, actors and dancers, singers and musicians. Claudie wants more than anything to be a person whose imagination can fly instead of a person whose feet are stuck on the ground. She tries dancing, singing, painting, and even baking, but none...

A rousing and empowering story of dedication and overcoming all odds, featuring the tough and unforgettable athletes of the champion Lady Tigers softball team. Violence was a way of life for the girls of Mott Middle School in the South Bronx. Some woke up to it at home, and others dodged it on the way to school. Vicious physical fights broke out in classrooms, hallways, and bathrooms. These girls filed their fingernails into sharp points because...

"Renowned African American studies scholar Karla Holloway has been working on her first novel, "A Death in Harlem," for some years, as she blazed bright, consequential, and broad trails as a professor, dean, and administrator at Duke University. In this Harlem Renaissance mystery, Weldon Haynie Thomas is Harlem's first "colored" policeman, blessed with insight, humor, resourcefulness, and a deep intuition. (While Haynie is a fictional creation, the...