The City of Refuge: The Collected Stories of Rudolph Fisher - Softcover

Fisher, Rudolph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0826218121 ISBN 13: 9780826218124

Verlag: University of Missouri Press, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

<div><div>One of the premier writers of the Harlem Renaissance, Rudolph Fisher wrote short stories depicting the multifaceted black urban experience that are still acclaimed today for their humor, grace, and objective view of Harlem life. Through his words, wrote the <i>New York Times Book Review</i>, &#8220;one feels, smells, and tastes his Harlem; its people come alive and one cares about them.&#8221;<div><br> A definitive collection of Fisher&#8217;s short stories, <i>The</i><i> City of Refuge</i> offers vibrant tales that deal with the problems faced by newcomers to the city, ancestor figures who struggle to instill a sense of integrity in the young, problems of violence and vengeance, and tensions of caste and class. This anthology has now been expanded to include seven previously unpublished stories that take up such themes as marital infidelity and passing for black and also relate the further adventures of Jinx and Bubber, the comic duo who appeared in Fisher&#8217;s two novels.<div><br> This new edition also includes two unpublished speeches and the popular article &#8220;The Caucasian Storms Harlem,&#8221; describing the craze for black music and dance. John McCluskey&#8217;s introduction has been updated to place the additional works within the context of Fisher&#8217;s career while situating his oeuvre within the broader context of American writing during the twenties.<div><br> Fisher recognized the dramatic and comic power in African American folklore and music and frequented Harlem&#8217;s many cabarets, speakeasies, and nightclubs, and at the core of his work is a strong regard for music as context and counterpoint. <i>The City of Refuge</i> now better captures the sounds of the city experience by presenting all of Fisher&#8217;s known stories. It offers a portrait of Harlem unmatched in depth and range by Fisher&#8217;s contemporaries or successors, celebrating, as <i>Booklist </i>noted, &#8220;the complexity of black urban life in its encounter with the dangers and delights of the city.&#8221; This expanded edition adds new perspectives to that experience and will enhance Fisher&#8217;s status for a new generation of readers.</div></div></div></div></div>

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

<div><div><b>Rudolph Fisher</b> (1897&#8211;1934), a Phi Beta Kappan, was a dynamic force during the Harlem Renaissance, participating as an author, orator, and musician while also working full-time as a physician. He was the author of two novels, <i>The Walls of Jericho </i>and <i>The Conjure Man Dies</i>,as well as numerous short stories, book reviews, and scientific articles.</div><div><br><b>John McCluskey, Jr.</b>, is Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington and author of <i>Look What They Done to My Song, Mr. America&#8217;s Last Season Blues, </i>and <i>Black Men Speaking</i>.</div></div>

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The City of Refuge

The Collected Stories of Rudolph Fisher (New and Expanded Edition)

By John McCluskey Jr.

University of Missouri Press

Copyright © 2008 The Curators of the University of Missouri
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8262-1812-4

Contents

Preface, 
Introduction, 
I. The Quest, 
The City of Refuge, 
Ringtail, 
The South Lingers On, 
Ezekiel, 
Ezekiel Learns, 
The Promised Land, 
Guardian of the Law, 
Miss Cynthie, 
II. The New Land, 
High Yaller, 
Dust, 
The Backslider, 
Fire by Night, 
Blades of Steel, 
Common Meter, 
John Archer's Nose, 
III. The Unpublished Stories, 
The Lost Love Blues, 
The Man Who Passed, 
Skeeter, 
Across the Airshaft, 
The Lindy-Hop, 
One Month's Wages, 
A Perfect Understanding, 
Appendix, 
Works of Rudolph Fisher, 

CHAPTER 1

THE CITY OF REFUGE

I

Confronted suddenly by daylight, King Solomon Gillis stood dazed and blinking. The railroad station, the long, white-walled corridor, the impassable slot-machine, the terrifying subway train — he felt as if he had been caught up in the jaws of a steam-shovel, jammed together with other helpless lumps of dirt, swept blindly along for a time, and at last abruptly dumped.

There had been strange and terrible sounds: "New York! Penn Terminal — all change!" "Pohter, hyer, pohter, suh?" Shuffle of a thousand soles, clatter of a thousand heels, innumerable echoes. Cracking rifle shots — no, snapping turnstiles. "Put a nickel in!" "Harlem? Sure. This side — next train." Distant thunder, nearing. The screeching onslaught of the fiery hosts of hell, headlong, breathtaking. Car doors rattling, sliding, banging open. "Say, wha'd'ye think this is, a baggage car?" Heat, oppression, suffocation — eternity — "Hundred 'n turdy-fif' next!" More turnstiles. Jonah emerging from the whale.

Clean air, blue sky, bright sunlight.

Gillis set down his tan cardboard extension case and wiped his black, shining brow. Then slowly, spreadingly, he grinned at what he saw: Negroes at every turn; up and down Lenox Avenue, up and down 135th Street; big, lanky Negroes, short, squat Negroes; black ones, brown ones, yellow ones; men standing idle on the curb, women, bundle-laden, trudging reluctantly homeward, children rattle-trapping about the sidewalks; here and there a white face drifting along, but Negroes predominantly, overwhelmingly everywhere. There was assuredly no doubt of his whereabouts. This was Negro Harlem.

Back in North Carolina Gillis had shot a white man and, with the aid of prayer and an automobile, probably escaped a lynching. Carefully avoiding the railroads, he had reached Washington in safety. For his car a Southwest bootlegger had given him a hundred dollars and directions to Harlem; and so he had come to Harlem.

Ever since a traveling preacher had first told him of the place, King Solomon Gillis had longed to come to Harlem. The Uggams were always talking about it; one of their boys had gone to France in the draft and, returning, had never got any nearer home than Harlem. And there were occasional "colored" newspapers from New York: newspapers that mentioned Negroes without comment, but always spoke of a white person as "So-and-so, white." That was the point. In Harlem, black was white. You had rights that could not be denied you; you had privileges, protected by law. And you had money. Everybody in Harlem had money. It was a land of plenty. Why, had not Mouse Uggams sent back as much as fifty dollars at a time to his people in Waxhaw?

The shooting, therefore, simply catalyzed whatever sluggish mental reaction had been already directing King Solomon's fortunes toward Harlem. The land of plenty was more than that now; it was also the city of refuge.

Casting about for direction, the tall newcomer's glance caught inevitably on the most conspicuous thing in sight, a magnificent figure in blue that stood in the middle of the crossing and blew a whistle and waved great white-gloved hands. The Southern Negro's eyes opened wide; his mouth opened wider. If the inside of New York had mystified him, the outside was amazing him. For there stood a handsome brass-buttoned giant directing the heaviest traffic Gillis had ever seen; halting unnumbered tons of automobiles and trucks and wagons and pushcarts and street-cars; holding them at bay with one hand while he swept similar tons peremptorily on with the other; ruling the wide crossing with supreme self-assurance. And he, too, was a Negro!

Yet most of the vehicles that leaped or crouched at his bidding carried white passengers. One of these overdrove bounds a few feet, and Gillis heard the officer's shrill whistle and gruff reproof, saw the driver's face turn red and his car draw back like a threatened pup. It was beyond belief — impossible. Black might be white, but it couldn't be that white!

"Done died an' woke up in Heaven," thought King Solomon, watching, fascinated; and after a while, as if the wonder of it were too great to believe simply by seeing, "Cullud policemans!" he said, half aloud; then repeated over and over, with greater and greater conviction, "Even got cullud policemans — even got cullud —"

"Where y' want to go, big boy?"

Gillis turned. A little, sharp-faced yellow man was addressing him.

"Saw you was a stranger. Thought maybe I could help y' out."

King Solomon located and gratefully extended a slip of paper. "Wha' dis hyeh at, please, suh?"

The other studied it a moment, pushing back his hat and scratching his head. The hat was tall-crowned, unindented brown felt; the head was brown patent-leather, its glistening brush-back flawless save for a suspicious crimpiness near the clean-grazed edges.

"See that second corner? Turn to the left when you get there. Number forty-five's about halfway [down] the block."

"Thank y', suh."

"You from — Massachusetts?"

"No, suh, Nawth Ca'lina."

"Is 'at so? You look like a Northerner. Be with us long?"

"Till I die," grinned the flattered King Solomon.

"Stoppin' there?"

"Reckon I is. Man in Washin'ton 'lowed I'd find lodgin' at dis ad-dress."

"Good enough. If y' don't maybe I can fix y' up. Harlem's pretty crowded. This is me." He proffered a card.

"Thank y', suh," said Gillis, and put the card in his pocket.

The little yellow man watched him plod flatfootedly on down the street, long awkward legs never quite straightened, shouldered extension-case bending him sidewise, wonder upon wonder halting or turning him about. Presently, as he proceeded, a pair of bright green stockings caught and held his attention. Tony, the storekeeper, was crossing the sidewalk with a bushel basket of apples. There was a collision; the apples rolled; Tony exploded; King Solomon apologized. The little yellow man laughed shortly, took out a notebook, and put down the address he had seen on King Solomon's slip of paper.

"Guess you're the shine I been waitin' for," he surmised.

As Gillis, approaching his destination, stopped to rest, a haunting notion grew into an insistent idea. "That li'l yaller nigger was a sho' nuff gen'man to show me de road. Seem lak I knowed him befo' —" He pondered. That receding brow, that sharp-ridged, spreading nose, that tight upper lip over the two big front teeth, that chinless jaw — He fumbled hurriedly for the card he had not looked at and eagerly made out the name.

"Mouse Uggam, sho' 'nuff!...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of Missouri Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2008
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0826218121
• ISBN 13: 9780826218124
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 342
• Herausgeber: Mccluskey John Jr.
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar