AGO 1907-1980 A novelist, poet, and travel writer, Harry Roskolenko (he also wrote under several pseudonyms) made his mast memorable contribu- tions to twenctieth-cencury American literature with his three auto- biographies: When # Was Last on Cherry Street (1965), The Terrorized, Ipgs-iggo (1968), and Phe Jime That Was Then: The Lower Ease Side, 1900-1914, An Intimate Chronicle (1971). Roskolenka was born on Cherry Street on the Lower East Side, the thirteenth of fourteen children born to an immigrant Ukrainian Jewish couple. Fight children died of diseases in Ukraine. One of the six American-born children died of disease on the Lower East Side. Reskolenko’s father had been a miller in the Russian Ukraine. Having been drafted into the army of the czar, after owelve years of service he left the army and fled to America via Siberia and Japan, In New York City he worked as a presser in sweatshops and then in a slaughterhouse on First Avenue, on the present site of the United Nations. He brought his wife to New York City, where they started up anew family. Harry Roskolenko had very little formal education. At nine he was a factory worker, At fourteen he ran away from home, tramped led out of the Port of New York on a mer- around, and eventually chant ship. During the Great Depression he worked on the WPA Federal Writers’ Project, and then went back to sea as a second mate in the merchant marine. During World War IT he served as an offi- cer on an amy transport in the South Pacific. Roskolenko married Diana Chang in 1948. They had one child and were divorced in 1955. 150rly jewish American Writers Fram the 1950s onward Roskolenko made his living exclusively by writing—not an easy thing to do at any time. He wrote three novels: Black Is a Man (1954), The Mistress (1954), and Lan-Lan (1962). Black fy a fan is an allegorical novel about race relations be- fore the African American revolution of the 19605, A fifty-year-old racist white man, James Oggen, suddenly becomes a black man, a quirk of pigmentation. Life becomes totally threatening for him in a Kafkaesque world. He loses his wife, his friends, and his job. His minister is unable to help bit. Oggen wanders alone through the city as he tries to learn the ways of the “Negro.” Sally. a white married neighbor, is sexually aroused by Oggen and sees him as forbidden fruit. She subsequently accuses him of rape. He is arrested and pur on trial for his life. Oggen's wile finally comes to his rescue and convinces judge and jury thar this black man is her husband and that he has been framed. The novel is a not very believable allegorical indictment of the ridic- ulousness and cruelty of judging people by the color of their ski The Miseress is a bodice-ripping potboiler, Anne Browning, a twenty-five-year-old Park Avenue courtesan graduate of Smith Col- lege, wishes to write but also wants a husband. She leaves her lover and sails for France with the money from a legacy that conveniently comes through. On board the ocean liner she becomes acquainted with Stanley; a college-instructor friend of her former lover, who has desired her fora long time. Stanley pursues Aone around France as she continually refuses to sleep with him, She innocently gets into many scrapes, including be- coming mixed up with fascists. Stanley saves her, proposes, and she accepts with the provise that he let her write a novel before they have children, Roskolenko published The Adistress under the pseudonym Colin Ross, clearly implying he was not proud of the final product. Lan-Lan is Roskolenko's most accomplished novel, It is a tender ad Paris in love story full of the atmosphere of French Indechin the rg20s. Dr. Paul Galonon, a Parisian, is a man of conscience and compassion, He leaves the artist and model Genevieve, who is also no order his lover, to join the colonial administration in Cambod to help fghe cholera. The novel offers a fine description of decadent white colonial life, Ig]The Tenement Saga Galonon is in conflict with the immoral behavior of his fellow coun- trymen. One day he meets Lan-Lan, a well-educated Cambodian nurse. They fall in love and have a litle girl. When his tour is up, he returns to Paris. He intends to bring Lan-Lan and their daughter, Nakry, to Paris but hesitates because of racial qualms. He wonders if they will chey be happy there, and if the mixed-blood child will fit in. Surprisingly, Genevieve has waited for him all this time, bur after much soul-searching he chooses his Cambodian family. The Galo- nons will make their life in Paris for better or for worse. Following Dienbienphu, the Tet Offensive, the retreat from Sai- gon, and the Pol Por genocide, the novel gained a dimension and a special poignancy Roskolenko never intended. Despite Roskolenko's liberal politics, his “Orientalism” is condescending. Dr. Galonon never seriously contemplates a real family existence in Cambodia. ‘The family must live in che “civilized” West, not the “primitive” East, where, possibly, it would face less racism. When I War Last on Cherry Street is a moving account of a Lower East Side childhood, a wanderer’s youth, the development of a radi- cal, and the sexual life of a passionate, somerimes violent man. Ros- kolenko’s childhood and adolescence on the Lower East Side was a war scene. He fought as a gang member against the brutally anti- Semitic Irish youth gangs. He stole, was caught, and was often beaten. He fought with his father, who sometimes beat him too. He witnessed his mother being ru which she lost her right arm. A sister was also struck down by a truck and killed, He ran away trom home after a beating by his father and over by an ice truck, as a result of became a habe. Roskolenkos colortul prose and narrative skill make When Last f Was on Cherry Street a powerful read. We see his early stint on a coal barge on Lake Ontario and later on merchant ships sailing to Mex- ico and then on to Europe; his days asa ‘Trotskyite Communist Party member in New York City, where he experiences Stalinist br ty and terror: and his World War II service as an officer on army trans- ports in the South Pacific. In the end Roskolenko returns to the Lower East Side, However, as a result of the grand schemes of Com- missioner Robert Moses and others, much of the neighborhood is in 1gz