With Love From Harlem by Reshonda Tate

OG's pick — this one stayed with me

genre: historical fiction, biographical fiction, jazz age

who this is for: those who love Black history and music, complicated love stories, and women who refused to be small even when the men in their lives kept asking them to be

OG's personal synopsis

Hazel Scott is a jazz prodigy, film star, and someone who does not do quiet. she's breaking barriers in 1940s Harlem when Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Harlem's most influential politician, walks into her life (with drama might I add) and doesn't leave. what follows is decades of love, ego, betrayal, and heartbreak so real it will make you want to jump in the book.

I felt this book in my chest. ReShonda Tate wrote Hazel's story so well it reads like a memoir straight from the woman herself. Billie Holiday, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes all show up and feel like they belong exactly where they are. the historical notes at the end that separate fact from fiction are the cherry on top. I didn't know Hazel Scott's name before this book. now I feel like I always have. a beautiful love letter to Harlem and to a woman who deserved so much better.