Terry Baker Mulligan is an American novelist. Author of the novel, ''Afterlife in Harlem'' and the memoir, ''Sugar Hill: Where the Sun Rose Over Harlem'', she is the winner of a 2012 IPPY Award and 2013 Benjamin Franklin Awards.

Childhood and education

Mulligan’s mother Olivia Hodges Jackson worked as a secretary in the offices of the

Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street (Manhattan), 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and 110th Street (Manhattan), ...

-based

New York Amsterdam News The ''Amsterdam News'' (also known as ''New York Amsterdam News'') is a weekly Black-owned newspaper serving New York City. It is one of the oldest newspapers geared toward African Americans in the United States and has published columns by s ...

, and later for the administration at the

City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, Cit ...

. Her father, the

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

-born Roy Baker, was a

Cotton Club The Cotton Club was a New York City nightclub from 1923 to 1940. It was located on 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue (1923–1936), then briefly in the midtown Theater District (1936–1940).Elizabeth Winter"Cotton Club of Harlem (1923- )" Blac ...

dancer and an entertainer with

Cab Calloway Cabell Calloway III (December 25, 1907 – November 18, 1994) was an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, conductor and dancer. He was associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, where he was a regular performer and became a popular vocalist ...

’s troupe during the

Harlem Renaissance The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater, politics and scholarship centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s. At the t ...

era. Although never married to her mother, Baker took some responsibility for Terry’s upbringing, with colorful weekend adventures along Seventh Avenue defining his relationship with young Terry. Mulligan attended both public and private schools while growing up in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, graduating high school from the “progressive powerhouse,” the

New Lincoln School The New Lincoln School was a private experimental coeducational school in New York City enrolling students from kindergarten through grade 12. History New Lincoln's predecessor was founded as Lincoln School in 1917 by the Rockefeller-funded Gener ...

in Harlem. She obtained her bachelor's degree in English from

Wagner College Wagner College is a private liberal arts college in Staten Island, New York City. Founded in 1883 and with an enrollment of approximately 2,200 students, Wagner is known for its academic program, The Wagner Plan for the Practical Liberal Arts. It ...

Staten Island Staten Island ( ) is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Richmond County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located in the city's southwest portion, the borough is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull an ...

, and she completed her formal education at the City College of New York, earning a Master of Arts degree in English.

Memoir, ''Sugar Hill: Where The Sun Rose Over Harlem''

Making her home in

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

Missouri Missouri is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee ...

, after her marriage to Michael Mulligan in the early 1970s, Mulligan began writing the first of several versions of what would become her award-winning 2012 memoir ''Sugar Hill, Where the Sun Rose Over Harlem.'' In it, she celebrates the life of the neighborhood as she knew it in the 1950s, a place where African-American achievers and celebrities made their homes alongside middle-class families and lower-income blacks and whites. Mulligan writes about her frequent visits to the

Apollo Theater The Apollo Theater is a music hall at 253 West 125th Street between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard (Seventh Avenue) and Frederick Douglass Boulevard (Eighth Avenue) in the Harlem neighborhood of Upper Manhattan in New York City. It is a not ...

in its heyday as a showcase for the great stars of jazz, soul, gospel, R&B and early rock ‘n roll. She also details extensively the shaping influence that her maternal grandmother, her mother and her mother’s sisters had on her growing up. The cover of ''Sugar Hill'' was included on the front of

Publishers Weekly ''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of B ...

in March 2012, featuring titles from the Independent Book Publishers Association.

Awards

In May 2012, ''Sugar Hill, Where the Sun Rose Over Harlem'' was awarded the Independent Publishers Gold Medal for Adult Multicultural Nonfiction. In 2013, ''Sugar Hill'' won tw
Benjamin Franklin Gold Medal Awards
for Autobiography/Memoir and Multicultural Writing.

References

External links

Afterlife in Harlem
- author's blog
Sugar Hill: Where the Sun Rose Over Harlem
- author's blog {{DEFAULTSORT:Mulligan, Terry Baker 1944 births Living people People from Harlem Writers from Manhattan African-American women writers African-American writers 21st-century African-American people 21st-century African-American women 20th-century African-American people 20th-century African-American women