Carla Kaplan

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Boston Globe reviews "Miss Anne in Harlem"

Kate Tuttle has written a thoughtful and insightful review of Miss Anne in Harlem for the Boston Globe's September 14th edition. She writes, "In Kaplan's richly researched, thoughtful new book....the author focuses not on the intellectual and artistic leaders of the Harlem Renaissance, nor the average black citizens whose daily lives informed the era, but on some of its most unusual denizens....'I am not interested in claiming heroic status for these women,' Kaplan writes, and readers will agree this is wise. Yet it's equally hard not to sympathize with their struggles against a society that steamrolled female ambitions and difference. Kaplan makes a vivid case for their importance as early adopters of the 'idea that identity is affiliation, allegiance, and desire—rather than biology or blood." Miss Anne in the literature of the Harlem Renaissance is mostly, Kaplan notes, 'a minor character—a befuddled dilettante or overbearing patron.' Yet, in choosing to live outside the boundaries prescribed by her birth, she deserves at least credit for courage."