July 2021
THE PERSONAL LIBRARIAN by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray is a book that you immediately want to talk about once you finish it. Like the subject of other novels that Marie has written, I wondered how I did not know the story of Belle da Costa Greene.
Belle was J. P. Morgan’s personal librarian. She had an eye for collecting art and treasured manuscripts, along with the funds to pursue buying them in the United States and Europe. But as renowned as she was in these circles, she had a secret. Her name was really Belle Marion Greener. She was dark-skinned not because she was Portuguese, but because she was Black passing as white. Her father was Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard, who lobbied for equal justice for Black people. Her mother, estranged from Richard, chose to raise the children as white, knowing that they could pass and get the equal education and opportunities that she wanted for them. Belle went through life with a fear that her secret would be discovered.
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