Harlem Rhapsody

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussions of racism.

Jessie is the novel’s protagonist. She is a fictionalized version of the real Jessie Redmon Fauset, who was literary editor of The Crisis from 1919 to 1926. All Jessie’s career highlights in the book match those of the historical Fauset, who did in fact publish her first novel, There Is Confusion, with Boni & Liveright in 1924. In Harlem Rhapsody, at the dinner for the Opportunity contest winners, Langston Hughes demands that Jessie join the writers on stage as the “literary midwife” of their movement (359), fictionalizing Hughes’s actual description of Fauset in his memoir, The Big Sea. 

The character of Jessie is 37 in 1919, when the story begins. Her middle name is actually Redmona, but she keeps that a secret. In the novel, as in real life, she is having an extramarital affair with W. E. B. Du Bois, whom she calls Will. He calls her “Juliet” and has created the literary editor position at The Crisis for her. Prior to coming to Harlem, Will encouraged Jessie to submit to The Crisis and published her work many times.

Before meeting Will, she studied several languages in the US and at the Sorbonne, and she frequently speaks French in the novel.