Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Substitute for Paris

Bowling Green Park

"The very idea of being in New York was dreamlike, for like many young Negroes at the time, I thought of it as the freest of American cities and considered Harlem as the site and symbol of Afro-American progress and  hope. I was both young and bookish enough to think of Manhattan as my substitute for Paris and of Harlem as a place for Left Bank excitement."
Ralph Ellison, Going to the Territory

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