The Riverside Theatre presents:
Terry Baker Mulligan
Reading from & Signing Copies of
Her New Memoir
“Sugar Hill, Where the Sun Rose Over
Harlem”
Thursday, June 7, 2012
7:30 p.m.
Using
Harlem’s famous cultural institutions and memorable characters as her backdrop,
Terry Baker Mulligan writes joyously about weathering adolescence, while
history unfolds
around her in the legendary neighborhood called Sugar Hill.
This feel-good story resonates with humor, warmth and wisdom as
Mulligan chronicles her life among flamboyant evangelists, curly-haired Doo-Wop
boys, snuff-dippers, Fidel Castro’s entourage, interracial marriages, chitlin’
parties and testy interactions between West Indian immigrants and Southern
blacks.
Meet Mr. Big B, the neighborhood numbers banker; join Terry at
Apollo matinees, where she is dazzled by Ella, Sammy Davis, Jr., Dinah
Washington, Miriam Makeba, Eartha Kitt, and R&B newcomers like Frankie
Lymon and the Teenagers. Neighborhood luminaries stroll the sidewalks: Mr. and
Mrs. Thurgood Marshall with baby carriage; Sugar Ray Robinson exiting his pink
Cadillac; and Malcolm X and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., politicking on the street
corners. Young Terry befriends baseball’s Willie Mays in the local shoeshine
parlor, paints posters for the 1957 March on Washington, and tries, but fails,
to ingratiate herself into junior black society.
Sugar Hill is a living document of mid
20th-century Harlem.
The story it tells will appeal to an America that knows the tremendous shaping
influence
Harlem has exerted on its national identity, both at home and around the globe.
Copies of
“Sugar Hill” will be on sale at the theatre,
and purchased copies will be signed by
the author
FREE ADMISSION
