Description: It's 1920s Harlem, and, man, the joint is jumpin'. Folks are coming and going and everything's copasetic as long as the gin's flowing. This is the scene Stephen Jorgenson dives into when he arrives from Canada and is taken uptown to "The Niggarati Manor", where everything's black and white (and lots of grayness in between). Counterbalancing Stephen's embrace of these folks is Paul, the manor's true artist-in-residence. Paul's cynical take on the "new Negro artist" is the tightrope he walks between love and hatred of himself and his people. Characters representing Langston Hughes. Zora Neale Hurston (who gave the building its name), and Alain Locke all appear, and part of the fun of this book is figuring out who's who.

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