A review by bookcrazyblogger
Magic City by Jewell Parker Rhodes

5.0

In Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921, Joe Samuels is a banker’s son and shoeshiner by choice, determined to make it as the next Houdini. He’s mourning his older brother Henry who died in the war and having strange, almost prophetic-like dreams. He lives in Greenwood, an all-black, prosperous town in the middle of white Tulsa. Mary Keane is a poor white woman living on a farm in Tulsa with her bitter father and her younger brother who lost a leg in WWI. She works part-time as an elevator operator and when she’s raped by her father’s farmhand, Mary loses what dignity she had left. These two cross paths when Joe takes an elevator ride with Mary, in full-view of Klansmen and Mary’s composure from her earlier rape, breaks. Seeking an easy target, they go after Joe. What will follow is a fictional account of a documented attempt at racial genocide in Tulsa, Oklahoma, as Klansmen burn down Greenwood-otherwise known as the 1921 Tulsa Massacre. My fellow white women, we need to talk. Actually, to be more accurate, we need to take a hard look at our history with Black men and women and we need to finally be honest. White women have weaponized their tears and femininity against Black people since the beginning, galvanizing white men into violence. The massacre is unknown because white people have demanded it to be that way. History books don’t focus on Black history, especially in the South and I will include my home state of Missouri in that. This book felt similar to The Water Dancer, because it used magical realism to explain the riot and it was honestly a brilliant decision. This book should be read as a reminder of whites atrocities committed against Black people for the sheer “crime” of existing.