Baker Imagines a Vibrant 1940s Harlem

Malcolm X saves a minister and his wife by ramming a sandwich cart into a group of white soldiers. So begins Kevin Baker’s last masterful installment of his “City of Fire” trilogy, “Strivers Row.”

The streets of Harlem that comprise the backdrop for Baker’s World War II-era novel are littered with ironic juxtapositions. Not the least of these is Striver’s Row, the elite black neighborhood where striving for anything seems perpetually futile.

While jazz emanates from every corner of the city, the two protagonists of the story—Jonah Dove, resident of Striver’s Row and minister of the Church of New Jerusalem, and the young Malcolm X (then Malcolm Little)—are engaged in a fateful dance of despair and isolation that is resolved climactically amidst a chaotic race riot.

The presence of Malcolm X in the novel surprisingly does not overshadow the other characters. The depiction of Malcolm Little—called “Red” by the dodgy crowd into which he predictably falls prey—as a young boy in Harlem is, at first, somewhat generic. He is the archetypal young arrival to the city that “wanted to see everything, to find whatever there was to find,” but manages only to find crime and a drug-induced stupor.

There is, however, substantial foreshadowing of Malcolm’s future status as a civil rights icon. His dreamed encounters with Elijah Muhammad, though fantastic, add a spiritual depth to Malcolm’s destitution, and allow a glimpse into the coming years.

However, Baker’s effort to encompass who Malcolm will become seems self-conscious at times.

At the end of the novel for instance, Malcolm knew, according to Baker, “that he was surely moving toward his own glorious destiny.”

The fictional Jonah Dove may be a more intriguing story. Directly descended from the Dove family that appears in the second book of the trilogy, “Paradise Alley,” the minister is a troubled legacy that creates an artful cohesion within the series.

His jarring interaction with the young Malcolm in the beginning of “Strivers Row,” sends Dove on an existential crisis; he revives his old and emotionally complex practice of “passing” as white in prestigious institutions throughout New York City. Meanwhile, Dove loses the support of his congregation and even his usually sympathetic wife.

The chance interactions between the two protagonists illuminate the suffering that both endure, and this is a great source of power in the fictional aspect of the novel. But the fantasy is steeped richly in the historical portrait of Harlem, and Baker’s talent is showcased through this recreation.

In “Strivers Row,” Baker describes Lionel Hampton’s band at the Savoy: “Tripping on out to the floor as the tempo built, the drum pounding atop the bass line, then the trombones circling back to the theme again and again in long, dizzying loops, working the dancers harder and harder.”

This imagery is also applicable to “Strivers Row.” The literary acrobatics that Kevin Baker exhibits make the novel a lively and meaningful conclusion to his widely acclaimed “City of Fire” trilogy.

Strivers Row
By Kevin Baker
HarperCollins
Out Now