Cordelia the Crude

Thurman, Wallace. "Cordelia the Crude." The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. Ed. David L. Lewis. New York: Viking Penguin, 1994. 628-33. Print.

Two things stuck out to me in this reading. The first is the fact that Cordelia, as an in-the-know prostitute, would be picky about who she serviced. She didn’t seem concerned with danger, but was picky about the race of the person. She tried to avoid or turn down Jewish men and middle-aged black men, and entice half blacks and whites. I don’t think this has to do with a fear of certain men (big black man stereotype, for example) but rather a rational business practice. The fact that she avoids Jewish men as well as black men says to me that she is just avoiding stingy clients, or clients that would potentially skimp out on her. Another consideration is the power she would hold over any white or half-white men; sleeping with a black prostitute would surely have been grounds for excommunication and becoming a social pariah. If one of these men had tried to get away with not paying her, she would be able to hold this over their heads. What this says about racial stereotypes and the attitudes towards blacks is pretty clear, but it still stood out to me – especially because someone who has chosen to be a prostitute is so in-tune with the nuances of racial haves and have-nots.

The second thing that I picked up on was fact that Harlem wasn’t a nirvana for every black person that lived there. Although Cordelia was driven by her rebellious defiance of her parents’ wants, she is still a young black girl who does not enjoy Harlem. It is habitual to assume that Harlem is the end-all to black peoples’ suffering, but of course this is not the case – Harlem would, as with anything, only appeal to certain people, and Cordelia was not one of them.