I made my first visit to Harlem last month, and upon my return read Russell Sharman’s newly released book, The Tenants of East Harlem. Since my daughter has spent the summer working in East Harlem, I was eager to capture an insider’s insights. Central Harlem’s gentrification was taking a different form from that seen in San Francisco, and a new book on how gentrification was impacting East Harlem’s tenants appeared particularly timely.

But the book does not really focus on the neighborhood’s gentrification until the concluding chapter. It instead relies on individual case studies of East Harlem residents who are supposed to represent the neighborhood’s various ethnic groups. If Sharman’s characterizations are correct, East Harlem’s low-income population faces ethnic-based rivalries that makes unified opposition to gentrification more difficult.

During my recent trip to Central Harlem, I was struck by the building-by-building renovation process underway. Half the buildings on my daughter’s block on 127th Street (at Lenox) were being renovated; whether they had previously been vacant for years, or tenants had been evicted recently, was not clear. This was not the type of massive “urban renewal” whereby large-scale demolitions and/or development projects displace African-Americans, as occurred in San Francisco. Rather, it seemed that Central Harlem would become more upscale brownstone by brownstone, as those tree-lined streets that always seemed ripe for gentrification are now attracting a new demographic to the area.

Harlem’s building by building upgrading was only seen in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district in the 1970’s. But that gentrification effort was spawned by a city-created code upgrade program, whereas the Harlem process appears to be driven by private investors seeking to profit from upgraded housing.

Russell Sharman’s new book does not lend much new light on this gentrification process, either in Central or East Harlem. Instead, Sharman gives us a good sense of the way ethnic changes in East Harlem have impacted the community, using individual case studies to convey his themes.

We thus learn about an elderly Italian who talks about the neighborhood as it used to be, a Puerto Rican who bemoans the increasing influx of Mexican immigrants (Sharman notes that while the Museo del Barrio was created for Puerto Ricans, it now houses art of all Latino immigrant groups, a shift reflected in the area’s demographics), an African immigrant who owns a 99cent store, a Chinese immigrant who saves his money from working in a hotel and become Sharman’s landlord, and others.

These profiles can be illuminating, but they raise questions as to how representative are those interviewed. For example, Italian Pete never married. This does not change his ability to describe the good old days, but since most Italian men of his age did marry, perhaps his perspectives are skewed. Sharman also unintentionally reaffirms some ethnic stereotypes with his accounts. It is the Asian who saves his money and buys a building, while the Puerto Rican spends down his retirement account on an ill-conceived short-term relocation to Florida and is left bemoaning his inability to buy property in his Harlem neighborhood.

Sharman openly discusses his awkwardness in living in East Harlem as a white person, but more awkward is the fact that among those he profiles are his landlord and neighbor. These folks were likely more willing to talk with the author, but perhaps they could not talk as frankly given their personal relationship.

Sharman’s depiction of the rivalry among East Harlem’s ethnic groups is the book’s strong point. He makes it clear that while gentrification is often seen as wealthy whites coming in to displace people of color, that those moving in to the new upscale dwellings of East Harlem are people of color themselves. Similar stories are heard about the new dwellings in Central Harlem, which increasingly house upper-middle class African Americans.

Sharman’s work increases our understanding of East Harlem’s demographics, but readers should look to Arlene Davila’s Barrio Dreams for a more thorough analysis of Harlem’s gentrification process.

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