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What Inspired A Death in Harlem?

Karla Holloway, the James B. Duke Emerita of English and professor of African & African American Studies and Law, describes what inspired her to write A Death in Harlem.

In A Death in Harlem, Holloway weaves a mystery in the bon vivant world of the Harlem Renaissance. Taking as her point of departure the tantalizingly ambiguous “death by misadventure” at the climax of Nella Larsen’s Passing, Holloway accompanies readers to the sunlit boulevards and shaded side streets of Jazz Age New York. A murder there will test the mettle, resourcefulness, and intuition of Harlem’s first “colored” policeman, Weldon Haynie Thomas.