Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead

Doubleday 336 pp.

By Kimberly Fain

In Colson Whitehead’s latest novel, Harlem Shuffle, Ray Carney is a furniture salesman struggling to make ends meet. With the help of his misfit cousin Freddie, Carney deals in stolen jewelry on the side. After a crew of bandits raid the Hotel Theresa, Carney hopes his involvement does not lead to his own murder. Although Carney engages in criminal misdeeds, he’s a sympathetic character in part because he is a family man. With his wife Elizabeth, he has a second child on the way. If Carney manages to stay alive, his double life may be discovered.

Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle continues his success as one of the literary giants of our time. One of his past novels, the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Underground Railroad, confronts the vestiges of slavery and another, The Nickel Boys, tackles racism in the Jim Crow justice system. With Harlem Shuffle, Whitehead depicts another American era, bringing 1960s Harlem back to life. In this mixed-genre — family saga and crime — story, Whitehead moves stealthily beyond the detective story of his acclaimed 1999 novel The Intuitionist. Unlike The Intuitionist’s dignified protagonist, Lila Mae, Harlem Shuffle centers a problematic male protagonist on the wrong side of the tracks.

Although Carney comes from a line of lawbreakers, he married into an affluent family. Elizabeth’s parents don’t hide their disappointment at the union. Leland, Elizabeth’s father, exhibits no respect for Carney’s furniture business. Carney’s elitist father-in-law calls him “that rug peddler.” Compared to the fashionable Striver’s Row townhouse that Elizabeth grew up in, their marital home is far beneath what her parents hoped for. The dingy Carney apartment has two windows: one faces an air shaft and the other looks toward a train track.

Striver’s row is a prestigious part of Harlem. In the hands of Whitehead, Harlem is a stunning motif representing a cultural mecca of intellect, art, and business. Where Elizabeth comes from, an individual’s profession, prestigious education, and light skin tone may determine economic and social advancement. For Carney, all those standards are impossible to measure up to. Carney’s crooked father is the opposite of his accountant father-in-law. Whitehead uses this dichotomy of corruptibility and respectability as both the internal and external conflict within the novel. Carney dresses professionally and wants to provide a safe and secure living for his family. However, he is persuaded to commit a crime that will bring heat to his duplicitous living. Now, he has cops and gangsters searching for him.

Harlem’s underbelly cares little about the Hotel Theresa’s glorious contribution to Black history. Newspaper stories from the time recount the fabulous people who visited it: Joe Louis, Cab Calloway, Dinah Washington, and other well-known, well-off Black folks. Continuing this dichotomy between corruptibility and respectability, Whitehead tells the reader that although the Hotel Theresa is the “headquarters of the Negro world,” pimps and working girls also inhabit the magnificent, terra-cotta white structure.

From this community of hoodlums come Freddie and his crew, who commit the Hotel Theresa Heist. Freddie has a history of drawing his cousin Carney into his troubled lifestyle. Carney may feel obligated to Freddie because his mother, Millie, took care of Carney when he was young. At the age of nine, Carney’s mom passed away and his dad was nowhere to be found. When Carney’s father came back into his life, he remembered rat bites and heatless winters. Even though Carney is an adult, his humble upbringing still causes him shame.

Embedded in Harlem Shuffle’s narrative is Whitehead’s willingness to confront race, class, and power head-on. Ever since a police officer killed a boy, the New York City newspapers featured racially inflammatory rhetoric about Black youth going wild on the subways. Whitehead knows the American conscience when it comes to race. By making White people fear young Black people, news reports of this kind were designed to justify the actions of the cop who killed.

Whitehead skillfully weaves a complex tapestry of Harlem’s racial issues. He threads the peaceful protests and rallies of the powerless into his depiction of business owners protecting their assets from rioters. He shows Carney and his employee Rusty brandishing baseball bats for four nights. They’re ready for anyone thinking of busting through glass to get into his showroom. And he depicts Black business owners posting signs saying “NEGRO OWNED & OPERATED,” while protesters chant “We want Malcolm X!”

Like Whitehead’s previous award-winning novels, Harlem Shuffle exudes authorial power and profound insight into the American experiment. In this multi-layered crime narrative, Whitehead presents complex characters who embody the complexity of their social milieu. Like America, Harlem’s stratified beauty is symbolic of the constant tension between those who are corrupt and those who are trying to lead a respectable existence. Ultimately, the power of Whitehead’s mixed-genre narrative is his exploration and insight into the duplicitous mindset of the American consciousness.

Kimberly Fain is an attorney, and teaches African American literature at Texas Southern University. She has two published books: Colson Whitehead: The Postracial Voice of Contemporary Literature and Black Hollywood: From Butlers to Superheroes, the Changing Role of African American Men in the Movies. Follow her on Twitter at @KimberlyFain