Tag Archives: Family

A Sort of Homecoming

Uncle was bad at everything
Cape Cod cares about.

He excelled in one way only:
he loved my fault-finding aunt without reason.

He was blessed in one way only:
his indulgent family loved him without reason.

Today we buried him next to my waiting aunt
in the only home he has wanted for seven years.

Luvgood Carp, Editor-in-Chief

Harlem Hustle

So Colson Whitehead knows how to tell a story, and Harlem Shuffle is a great one. The novel opens in 1959, jumps to 1961, and wraps up in 1964. It is a time of intense transition in New York City, as is obvious by all the people jettisoning their radios and buying TVs. And the changes are chaotic and violent, as is evident by the 1964 race riots in Harlem. But this is nothing new. It is always a time of intense transition in New York City, and the changes are always chaotic and frequently violent.

Carney owns a furniture store in Harlem. That’s his legitimate business. His side hustle is less legitimate. He fences the odd piece of jewelry or electronics for his cousin, Freddie, and a few other small-time thieves. Just to be clear, however, in a city where cops, successful businessmen, politicians, and everyone else is corrupt, Carney is “only slightly bent when it [comes] to being crooked.”

Freddie gets him involved in a heist of the Hotel Theresa, which is a sacred place in Harlem. Robbing it is tantamount to “taking a piss on the Statue of Liberty.” The insult is magnified because they rob it on Juneteenth. That kind of bad karma is a snapping turtle. It bites hard and doesn’t let go.

This starts a chain of events over the next several years that has Carney trying to survive his judgment-impaired cousin, corrupt White cops, disingenuous light-skinned Black businessmen, and the descendants of Dutch families who originally “bought” the island and think they still own it. Carney is the ultimate underdog relying on his wits and guts to survive, and the reader can’t help but root for him.

Survival is a major theme. “Black people always found a way in the most miserable circumstances. If we didn’t, we’d have been exterminated by the white man long ago.” So is revenge. When Carney’s application to the Dumas Club is rejected (because he is too dark-skinned and can’t pass the paper bag test), he goes after its leader, Wilfred Dukes. Not because he was excluded from Harlem’s most exclusive business club, but because Dukes encouraged him to give a “sweetener”, which Carney believes should have guaranteed his admission. The club is named for Alexandre Dumas, whose father was a French army officer and whose mother was a Haitian slave. Dumas wrote the most famous revenge story of all time – The Count of Monte Cristo. So that’s wonderful, and so is Carney’s revenge.

But the real story is how Carney deals with the consequences of the Hotel Theresa heist. Can his wits save him and Freddie? The novel ends at the construction site for the future World Trade Center (the Twin Towers). So more transitions are on the way. And they will be intense, chaotic, and violent.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Thoughts on the Dangers of Pretending to be a Poet (Part 3)

The dangers are legion, but this post pertains to mockery.

The harshest, obviously, is from your parents. “You are wasting your time and embarrassing the family,” my father says. Then he adds. “No one reads them anyway.”

“How can my poems embarrass the great Carp name if no one reads them?”

“Your unread poems aren’t the embarrassment. You are.”

My mother is gentler. “Muckypants, can you really be a poet if no one reads your poems?”

“You read my poems, Mom.”

“Oh, yes, that’s . . . right. Of course, I do. They’re very . . . quite long, aren’t they?”

“Well, I think they’re only as long as they need to be.”

“Oh, bless your heart.”

As anyone from Roanoke will tell you – if someone says “bless your heart,” you just said something stupid.

Luvgood Carp, Editor-in-Chief