The Jungles

A hidden history of twentieth-century American modernity that begins in a once-dynamic Black neighborhood in New York City with Thelonious Monk as its guiding star.

Set largely in the twelve-block area that would encompass Lincoln Center, The Jungles vibrantly reclaims the historic oasis that was once widely known as San Juan Hill, a hotbed of Black creative ferment with few artistic parallels in American cultural history. As best-selling author of Born in Blackness, Howard French reveals, this area, known as “the Jungles,” fostered, among others, a young Thelonious Sphere Monk (1917–1982). Even as Robert Moses tore down the neighborhood under the guise of “urban renewal,” Monk became a courageous symbol of resistance and artistic genius, his music finally recognized by the late 1950s. Yet with Billie Holiday dead and other Black artists silenced, the erasure felt deafening, extending even to the musical West Side Story, which depicted the exuberant gangs of Hell’s Kitchen as Latinos rather than as African Americans. One of our finest American storytellers, Howard French recreates the miraculous life of Thelonious Monk and breathes new life into a vanished world.