Good Hair

Entering the terrain of the African American upper class previously explored by Dorothy West and Andrea Lee, Little makes a distinctive debut. She shows a discerning eye for class divisions among socially mobile blacks and an astute insight into the damaged psyches that can result. Her protagonist is a middle-class African American woman whose values are called into question when she meets the crown prince of Boston's black bourgeoisie. Mount Holyoke graduate Alice Lee, now a newspaper reporter living in Manhattan, somewhat reluctantly falls in love with Mt. Sinai surgeon Jack Russworm, ""a Black Ward Cleaver, who made a million dollars a year and dressed in Armani."" But Alice, who grew up middle-class in Newark, worries about Jack's carefully maintained distance from the experience of less fortunate African Americans. Jack is a blue blood. Like others in his old-money, old-school crowd, he practices an unthinking elitism and social cruelty. As the couple moves closer to marriage, insecure Alice must confront the fact that many of her values seem to have more to do with wish-fulfillment than reality. Little shows skill in creating complex, well rounded characters--most crucially, Jack, who, although snobbish, naive and concerned with appearances, is at heart a good man. More than subtle class differences threaten his and Alice's relationship, however; a sexual misadventure almost parts them for good. Bill Cosby's cuddly ""Dr. Huxtable"" made the BUPs (black urban professionals) standard household fare, although Cosby muffled the stresses by removing the sting. Little's characters have their stingers intact, and her candid assessment of several generations of blacks whose aspirations are mixed with frustration and shame, as well as her portrayal of the small, closed society that W.E.B. Du Bois called the Talented Tenth, make this a compelling read. (Oct.)