This week on Black & Published, Nikesha speaks with return guest, Victoria Christopher Murray about her latest novel, Harlem Rhapsody. The novel tells the story of Jesse Redmon Faucet. A complex and ambitious woman who moved to New York to be nearer to her lover W.E.B. DuBois, and also to run his magazine, The Crisis. Between the scandal she had to keep quiet and an opportunity she didn’t want to squander, Victoria details how Jesse Redmon Faucet birthed what we now know as the Harlem Renaissance. 

In our conversation, Victoria explains why there would have been no boon in Black literature—then or now—without the visionary work of Ms. Faucet. Plus, the countless writers Faucet discovered and mentored whose works we still return to today. And the echoes of the past in the present Victoria is seeing in her own career where she’s been mandated to prove herself and to readers that Black stories sell. 

Mahogany Books

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