{"id":5352,"date":"2014-08-14T11:16:21","date_gmt":"2014-08-14T11:16:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=5352"},"modified":"2014-08-18T11:40:09","modified_gmt":"2014-08-18T11:40:09","slug":"above-sugar-hill-by-linda-mannheim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=5352","title":{"rendered":"Above Sugar Hill by Linda Mannheim"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Influx Press 31 May 2014 <\/strong><\/p>\n

176pp, paperback, \u00a39.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018The southern edge of Washington Heights abutted Sugar Hill, the northern edge of Harlem.\u00a0 During the Harlem Renaissance, Sugar Hill was where Harlem\u2019s elite lived: Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Justice Thurgood Marshall, Adam Clayton Powell Jr, Ralph Ellison, Willie Mays, Zora Neal Thurston, Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018But, by the time I was growing up, in the 1960s and \u201870s, Sugar Hill and Washington Heights were pretty much the way they are in these stories\u00a0 –\u00a0 filled with run down apartments and gunshot streets, heroin heated over flames and walls weeping with condensation.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018I wanted one thing: to get out.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Get out she did, at seventeen; but years later Linda Mannheim returned, \u2018to understand the place I came from\u2019.<\/p>\n

In these site-specific stories, set from 1973 to 2001 between 145th<\/sup> and 181st<\/sup> Street, she brings to life a New York neighbourhood. Variously described as, say, Frankfurt-on-the-Hudson, or Quisqueya Heights, in response to immigration surges from Europe and Central America, Washington Heights has more to it than any label: its people. \u00a0This thoughtful, generous writer shows us exactly who they are.<\/p>\n

In \u2018Marilyn Monroe on 165th<\/sup> Street\u2019, a haunting story in more ways than one, eleven-year-old Laura looks at the influence of Marilyn on three little girls and one grown-up one.\u00a0 In \u2018Once\u2019, Nora looks back, aged thirty, on her late childhood and misspent youth, remembering neglect, physical and sexual abuse, truanting, drugs.\u00a0 \u2018The Street\u2019 recalls local boys; \u2018Tenor\u2019, the murder of a tenant organizer; Puerto Ricans are hunted by the FBI in \u2018The Dust That Rises From Bombs\u2019.<\/p>\n

Mannheim\u2019s is a rare voice, reminiscent of the wonderful Jo Ann Beard\u2019s in The Boys of My Youth <\/em>or Gloria Naylor\u2019s in The Women of Brewster Place<\/em>, a voice the reader wants to hear again.\u00a0 What she looks at, she really sees:\u00a0 \u2018It is 1974.\u00a0 It is Saturday morning, spring-time, so there\u2019s the early edge of heat, that smell of sun against concrete, the parts of the city that can loosen loosening.\u2019\u00a0 Or:\u00a0 \u2018The MCC (Metropolitan Correctional Center) looks like any other building downtown.\u00a0 When you look up at the slick, long windows, you don\u2019t see the bars.\u00a0 In New York, it\u2019s late fall, which means that everything\u2019s a little grayer than during the rest of the year.\u00a0 It\u2019s always winter near Wall Street.\u2019<\/p>\n

Here is an office worker:\u00a0 \u2018I worked ten blocks away for two years, temping for a man who talked to me like I was a toddler.\u00a0 Tight lips pulled over perfect teeth.\u00a0 You\u2019re looking very nice today, Elena.\u00a0 Very nice.\u00a0 <\/em>Still, it meant not having to sit in the temp agency waiting to get sent out while I did desperate arithmetic with my debts and watched the white girls get sent out first.\u2019\u00a0 \u00a0Here, a woman who made it out and up is waiting for her fix of heroin:\u00a0 \u2018You\u2019re standing in the doorway, waiting for the man to come, waiting for the cranberry BMW with Jersey plates.\u00a0 It comes and you go, open the door just enough so you can hand him the cash and he hands you the tiny bag and you take it like it\u2019s a ticket home, the cellophane smooth in your palm.\u00a0 You reach back in and shake his hand, automatically giving him that forced smile you save for all your business transactions.\u2019<\/p>\n

Acclaimed by fellow-authors Eimear McBride, Stuart Evers and Alison Moore, Linda Mannheim is a real find.\u00a0 Influx Press of Hackney Downs in London are to be congratulated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/p>\n

‘During the Harlem Renaissance, Sugar Hill was where Harlem\u2019s elite lived: Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Justice Thurgood Marshall, Adam Clayton Powell Jr, Ralph Ellison, Willie Mays, Zora Neal Thurston, Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes\u2026But, by the time I was growing up, in the 1960s and \u201870s, Sugar Hill and Washington Heights were pretty much the way they are in these stories – filled with run down apartments and gunshot streets, heroin heated over flames and walls weeping with condensation.I wanted one thing: to get out.\u2019 […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5352"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5358,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5352\/revisions\/5358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}