New York Dream

Met Museum

"'New York!' he said. 'That’s not a place, it’s a dream.'"
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

Harlem

"Overcrowded and exploited politically and economically, Harlem is the scene and symbol of the Negro's perpetual alienation in the land of his birth."
Ralph Ellison, The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison

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