Magic City ⭑⭑⭑
Genre: Historical Fiction
US Publication: June 1, 1997
Print: 384 pages
Audio: 10 hours 50 minutes
Confetti Rating: 3 stars
REVIEW:
Today and tomorrow (May 31 and June 1) mark the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre, the 1921 tragedy also known as the Black Wall Street Massacre and (formerly) the Tulsa race riot. After a 19-year-old Black man was accused of assaulting a 17-year-old White female in an elevator, a White mob was deputized and armed, martial law was declared, and an entire Black community was destroyed by aerial and ground attack. Approximately 10,000 people were left homeless, and 39 people were killed.
This is an event that, at least until now, has not been widely taught in US schools. It is gradually becoming more well known though given its inclusion in the recent TV series “Watchmen” and “Lovecraft Country,” plus news coverage of the 100th anniversary. Harper Perennial has also marked the occasion by reissuing the 1997 historical fiction novel about the event, Magic City.
Because not much is known about the young man and woman and their elevator encounter, it struck me as odd that author Jewell Parker Rhodes structured the novel so heavily on their characters. The entire first half of the novel is focused on learning their backstories and the events that lead up to the massacre. The man (here called “Joe”) is obsessed with Houdini, and entire chapters are dedicated to his delusions of communicating with him. The woman (“Mary”) is repentant about her involvement in inciting the events, and readers then follow her as she tries to help, make friends, and develop a romantic relationship along the way.
For me, Magic City is historical fiction with a little too much fiction and not enough history. While I do encourage everyone to learn more about this tragedy, I’m not entirely sure this is the best text for that purpose. If you go into it as more of a character study, perhaps your expectations will be better met than mine were.
PUBLISHER SYNOPSIS:
With a new Afterword from the author reflecting on the 100th anniversary of one of the most heinous tragedies in American history — the 1921 burning of Greenwood, an affluent black section of Tulsa, Oklahoma, known as the "Negro Wall Street" — Jewell Parker Rhodes’s powerful and unforgettable novel of racism, vigilantism, and injustice, weaves history, mysticism, and murder into a harrowing tale of dreams and violence gone awry.
Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1921. A white woman and a black man are alone in an elevator. Suddenly, the woman screams, the man flees, and the chase to capture and lynch him begins.
When Joe Samuels, a young Black man with dreams of becoming the next Houdini, is accused of rape, he must perform his greatest escape by eluding a bloodthirsty mob.
Meanwhile, Mary Keane, the white, motherless daughter of a farmer who wants to marry her off to the farmhand who viciously raped her, must find the courage to help exonerate the man she accused with her panicked cry.
Magic City evokes one of the darkest chapters of twentieth century, Jim Crow America, painting an intimate portrait of the heroic but doomed stand that pitted the National Guard against a small band of black men determined to defend the prosperous town they had built.