“America happened!” The Impact of Media on Perceptions of Self

Elizabeth Colomba and Aurélie Levy’s Queenie: Godmother of Harlem tells the story of Stephanie St. Clair, “a racketeer and a bootlegger” who became infamous in Harlem during the 1930s. Born and raised on a plantation in Martinique, a French colony, St. Clair left the island in 1912 for the United States, and she made a name for herself, rising above the poverty and racism and she endured, becoming “the ruthless queen of Harlem’s mafia, and a fierce defender of the Black community.” Queenie details St. Clair’s fight to maintain her territory and save herself as Italian mobsters seek to acquire her assets and position. She counters these attacks through the cultivation of her image and through her support of the Black community.

I could do a whole post on Queenie, but instead of focusing on everything in Colomba and Levy’s graphic narrative, I want to focus on one scene where St. Clair, along with her righthand man Bumpy, meet with Harris to discuss ways to eliminate Dutch Schultz from the equation. The meeting takes place in a movie theater during a screening of Gary Cooper and Lili Domita’s 1931 western Fighting Caravans, a film based on Zane Grey’s 1929 novel of the same name. In the film, Cooper plays Clint Belmet, a frontier scout who accompanies a wagon train out west, encountering attacks from Indigenous individuals and smugglers…