Seeing that this book was one of those that I was "saving" in my TBR pile, I wanted it to be extraordinary and worth the wait. I was disappointed. I really wanted this book to ooze with all the Harlem goodies I imagined. There was no ooze.

"I don't remember a thrill that was specific to being in Harlem. The thrill was in the library. Harlem was the place I rushed past to meet it. The library was my true destination."

From Rhodes-Pitts we get present day Harlem with some of the past sprinkled throughout. She makes seamless shifts between the past and the present. She compliments a current event with one from the past. There is a certain eloquence to the presentation but yet this eloquence is enveloped in boredom. Rhodes-Pitts is a Texas transplant to Harlem who really doesn't allow the city to seduce her. She seems to purposely stand on the side lines and observe with very little engagement.

Once people found out Ms. Rhodes-Pitts was a writer they either opened up to her or totally objected to their stories being written. The ones that gave their stories and were forth coming with their history of Harlem were stirring and reflective. One could not help but be touched by the story of Ms. Minnie Davis and all the neighbors that lived in Ms. Rhodes-Pitts building. It is clear that Rhodes-Pitts is most comfortable in the library doing research on Harlem past.

My favorite chapter and the one I found the most golden nuggets in was, "Into the City of Refuge." My entire perspective on Ralph Ellison changed after reading this chapter. Of course there were the "expected" mentions and thoughts on Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, and others of the Harlem Renaissance but Rhodes-Pitts didn't dwell on the familiar people and places she dug out the obscure. The insight and background given on Arturo Schomburg and how he built his collection which was in turn turned into one of the most well known centers for African-American research made the entire book worth reading.

This book was a rollercoaster of highs and lows. One could definitely get the feel that Rhodes-Pitts never really had a connection to Harlem she just came for the research. I'm a Historian ( I have the student loans to prove it) and I am a sucker for the origins of things but there were parts of this book where I was bored to sleep, literally. I thought she would never stop describing the lives of scrapbooker, L. S. Gumby, and the flamboyant Raven Chanticleer founder of the African-American Wax Museum. These men had interesting lives but not enough to have almost entire chapters dedicated to them. I did notice a common reference in Harlem is Nowhere and Sugar Hill: Where the Sun Rose Over Harlem they both mentioned the Harlem Dream books! ( )

Though it took me a while to get through this book I'm glad I did. It's a very personal and richly written history of Harlem, including a lot of very personal insights from the author. She gives the reader insight not just into the straight up history of the area but also the people, the art, the music, everything. ( )

Perhaps this should be titled "Harlem on Her Mind." This is an atmospheric portrait of the "Capital of Black America." Rhodes-Pitts' mixes the idea of Harlem that she gets from reading African-American authors (Hughes, Baldwin, Ellison), with her actual experience living there, and researching the history of the neighborhood at the Schomburg Library. The book ranges across genres - history, memoir, reportage - to give a kaleidoscopic portrait of a quickly gentrifying area. Ironically, by the time one finishes reading the book, some of the buildings and neighbors Rhodes-Pitts talks about may be gone. ( )

Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts has written a tribute to Harlem that she can be proud of and gives much to the rest of us to think about. Arriving in Harlem when gentrification was well on its way to changing the face of this once thriving "mecca" of black american culture, Rhodes-Pitts is, in turn, resident, neighbour, scholar, friend, political voice, masterful storyteller. In her regular walk from her front stoop to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture where she is gathering material for this book, we see what and who she sees, we stop when she does, listen in on her conversations, and pick up new tidbits of information along the way. For instance, it was a great surprise to me to learn that the point of departure for Toni Morrison's novel, "Jazz", can be found in James VanDerZee's "The Harlem Book of the Dead".

The book's title, "Harlem is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America", is from a 1948 essay by Ralph Ellison called "Harlem is Nowhere" in which Ellison describes a Harlem in "psychic disrepair". I'm not sure that Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts would necessarily disagree with that viewpoint, yet I also got from her telling a sense of hope, that Harlem could in fact be everywhere. ( )