Harlem

Tomorrow marks the beginning of my training as a teacher. I will report to the City College of New York at 9 a.m. to commence my immersion into mathematics, whatever that means. City College bears some significance to me for two reasons. The first harkens back to my youth when I watched an HBO documentary on the 1951 CCNY basketball team. Their team of blacks, Jews, and immigrants defeated Adolph Rupp's all-WASP Kentucky Wildcats team en route to a national title, which was a big deal on all sorts of social levels. They were later found to fix games for gamblers, which also was a big deal on all sorts of social levels.

The second reason is that CCNY sits in the heart of Harlem. I've been fascinated by Harlem ever since reading Langston Hughes in middle school, my interest stoked over the years by jazz recordings and James Baldwin's essays and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. I thought about Harlem while I read James Joyce's take on Dublin, the sow that eats her farrow. There was a common struggle for agency, a struggle to persevere despite drinking the poison of a system gone bad.

Now I get to experience Harlem for myself this summer, albeit some 70 to 80 years beyond Hughes' Harlem, 50 years past Ellison's, and about 40 years later than the Harlem with which I'm familiar through James Baldwin. Now, with Elton John's "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters" playing in my mind ("And now I know Spanish Harlem are not just pretty words to say"), I leave you with this Langston Hughes poem, aptly titled "Harlem."

What happens to a dream deferred?


Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?


Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.


Or does it explode?