A Love Song for Ricki Wilde

The Harlem Renaissance was an explosion of cultural, social, and artistic expression by African Americans in the 1920s. The era began in the Harlem district of New York City, fueled by the Great Migration, a period in the early 20th century when many Black Americans fled north—to escape racism and oppression in the South and to pursue better job opportunities or creative exploits. The increase in migration occurred just after the Red Summer of 1919, following World War I, which was an outbreak of racial violence orchestrated by whites, including massacres, lynchings, and arson. Following the Great Migration, Harlem became the hub of a thriving Black arts scene, ushering in the cultural production of the Jazz Age during what would become known as the Roaring Twenties.

Through music, art, literature, and other creative avenues, the Black artists of the Harlem Renaissance emphasized the importance of freedom—whether political, economic, social, or artistic. Contributing to this ethos were the experiences of Black soldiers in World War I (1914-1918); after being treated much more equally by white Europeans, they returned to the United States with a reinvigorated demand for civil rights. The Harlem Renaissance ended with the Great Depression of the early 1930s. During this period of economic ruin, many questioned the importance of culture given the crippling social realities of poverty.

The novel highlights the Harlem Renaissance’s cultural influence through mentions of famous individuals who populated the era’s cultural scene. This includes authors, such as Nella Larsen, Ralph Ellison, Pat Cleveland, and Amiri Baraka; films, such as Moon over Harlem (1939), Hell up in Harlem (1973), and A Rage in Harlem (1991); photographers, such as Van Der Zee; and musicians, such as James P. Johnson, Willie “the Lion” Smith, Duke Ellington, and George Gershwin.

More specifically, Ezra’s life story explores the Black experience of this time in microcosm: He participates in the Great Migration, traveling from the hostility of the South seeking a better life in the north, where he adopts a perspective that reflects the hope for a better life that 1920s Harlem’s seemed to presage. Another iconic element of the Harlem Renaissance comes through in Ricki’s obsession with and romanticization of the era’s glamour, and her interest in unearthing the era’s footprints in 21st-century Harlem.

The novel’s descriptions also convey the tone of the period when Harlem represented the dream for Black freedom and expression. Passages such as: “On Friday nights, at secret locations, they hosted ‘piano cutting contests,’ where Johnson would play his battle song, the hard-as-hell-to-master ‘Carolina Shout,’ and challenge every pianist in the house to try it himself” (42), or “what it must’ve been like back when Harlem was the epicenter of Jazz Age glamour. Flappers shimmying in satin, men in spats and hats. The fast, frenzied craze of the Roaring ’20s” (25), demonstrate the immersive quality of the music, photography, art, and dance for people driven by optimism and the desire for change.