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    Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance
    Unavailable
    Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance
    Unavailable
    Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance
    Ebook794 pages14 hours

    Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance

    By Carla Kaplan

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Celebrated scholar Carla Kaplan’s cultural biography, Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance, focuses on white women, collectively called “Miss Anne,” who became Harlem Renaissance insiders.
     
    The 1920s in New York City was a time of freedom, experimentation, and passion—with Harlem at the epicenter. White men could go uptown to see jazz and modern dance, but women who embraced black culture too enthusiastically could be ostracized.
     
    Miss Anne in Harlem focuses on six of the unconventional, free-thinking women, some from Manhattan high society, many Jewish, who crossed race lines and defied social conventions to become a part of the culture and heartbeat of Harlem.
     
    Ethnic and gender studies professor Carla Kaplan brings the interracial history of the Harlem Renaissance to life with vivid prose, extensive research, and period photographs.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateSep 10, 2013
    ISBN9780062199126
    Author

    Carla Kaplan

    Carla Kaplan is an award-winning professor and writer who holds the Stanton W. and Elisabeth K. Davis Distinguished Professorship in American Literature at Northeastern University. She is the author of The Erotics of Talk and Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters. A recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, Kaplan has been a fellow in residence at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the W. E. B. DuBois Institute and is a fellow of the Society of American Historians.

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    Reviews for Miss Anne in Harlem

    3.5/5

    26 ratings4 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Gave me an insight that I didn't think existed at this time period in America .
    • 4/5
      An interesting study on the social upheaval caused by early interracial social and intellectual exchange. It offers a glimpse of how parts of the American population are truly isolated and what happens when attempts are made to bridge that isolation. Carla Kaplan provides an excellent background and examples in the six women she profiles in this book.
    • 5/5
      This book is a keeper. Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance by Carla Kaplan is an amazing piece of research and was difficult to stop reading. The term “Miss Ann” was brand new to me. Most often, the women who were called "Miss Ann" thought it was a curse that they were white. One woman, Josephine Cogdell Schulyer pushed for "intermarriage as a solution to the race problem". She married a black man herself. She was able to keep her marriage secret from her parents by visiting them without her husband and her daughter. She really wants to make her mark in the world but after marrying, she pushed that aside and concentrated on homemaking. She found herself without women friends and her marriage was a disappointment. Her story is heart wrenching and very sad. This book is set in the 1920s and 1930s in Harlem mostly. Carla Kaplan concentrated on lives of six women who qualify as "Miss Anns" but their lives were all different. The author picked these women because their lives had the most documentation. But there were many white women who flocked to Harlem and their stories will never be told. Harlem at that time seemed to be big experiment. Whites wanted to go to Harlem so they could shock their friends and relatives with amazing tales. Blacks and Whites danced and drank together. It seemed that Whites could loosen up there. Harlem was exploding with Black art, poetry, literature, dance and acting. Duke Ellington played to an all White audience in the cotton club but usually blacks and whites played together in the nightclubs.The black people who lived there saw them as intruders. Celebrities like Tallulah Bankhead and her friend came in drag. Jimmy Durante was there so many recognizable celebrities and politicians came. Writers told of their experiences there. There were even tour guides. It took the Great Depression to end the Harlem Renaissance.This book is full of history that I never read about Harlem and Miss Ann.I received this book as a win from First Reads and that in no way influenced my thoughts or feelings in my review.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This history and group biography of several of the strong minded but sometimes misguided white women who inserted themselves into the Harlem Renaissance is a fascinating look at the rich culture of the time, black and white. Though the 1920's is thought of as an era of freethinking flappers, views of race were rigid and and punishments for crossing the color line were harsh. These "Miss Anne" white women wanted to help bring about a paradigm shift, but they met with a lot of resistance from both sides then, and are largely forgotten today. Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance is a scholarly book with end-notes and a bibliography, but it is anything but dry. The women's stories are told in sensitive but unvarnished detail and their lives are varied and highly interesting. I picked up the book because I wanted to read about forward thinking novelist Fannie Hurst and rebel British aristocrat Nancy Cunard, but the other women profiled include organizers, educators, and authors whose struggles, choices, personal lives, and public personas are just as compelling.

      1 person found this helpful