The Living Is Easy

An insightful, witty novel set in early twentieth-century black Boston by the Harlem Renaissance’s youngest member--reissued for a new generation of readers.

Dorothy West (1907-1998) shared the coveted Opportunity short-story prize with Zora Neale Hurston in 1927 and later moved to New York, where she became the youngest of the writers associated with the Harlem Renaissance. West founded and edited the influential African American literary magazine the Challenge and New Challenge. Also the author of The Wedding and The Richer, The Poorer, she lived on Martha’s Vineyard until her death.

Adelaide M. Cromwell (1919-2019) was an American sociologist and professor emeritus at Boston University, where she cofounded the African Studies Center in 1959 and directed the graduate program in Afro-American studies from 1969 to 1985. She was the first African-American instructor at Hunter College and at Smith College. In 1974, she was appointed as the first African-American Library Commissioner for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. She wrote several books on black history, including a groundbreaking study of Boston’s black upper class and a biography of Adelaide Casely-Hayford.