Harlem Renaissance: Five Novels of the 1920s

Brief Description: Five Novels of the 1920s leads off with Jean Toomer's Cane (1923), a unique fusion of fiction, poetry, and drama rooted in Toomer's experiences as a teacher in Georgia. Recognized on publication as a groundbreaking work of literary modernism, Toomer's masterpiece was followed within a few years by a cluster of novels exploring black experience and the dilemmas of black identity in a variety of modes and from different angles. Claude McKay's Home to Harlem (1928), whose free-wheeling, impressionistic, bawdy kaleidoscope of Jazz Age nightlife made it a best seller, traces the picaresque adventures of Jake, a World War I veteran, within and beyond Harlem. Nell Larsen's Quicksand (1928), the poignant, nuanced psychological portrait of a woman caught between the two worlds of her mixed Scandinavian and African American heritage; Jessie Redmon Fauset's Plum Bun (1928), the richly detailed account of a young art student's struggles to advance her career in a society full of obstacles both overt and insidiously concealed; and Wallace Thurman's The Blacker the Berry (1929), with its anguished, provocative look at prejudice and exclusion as it tells of a new arrival in Harlem searching for love, each in its distinct way testifies to the enduring power of the Harlem ferment. Often controversial in their own day for opening up new realms of subject matter (including intergenerational conflict and color prejudice within the African American community) and language (infusing a wealth of argot and previously unheard voices into American fiction), these novels continue to surprise by their passion, their unblinking observation, their lively play of ideas, and their irreverent humor. Biographical Note: RAFIA ZAFAR, editor, is a professor of English with joint appointments in the African & African American Studies and American Culture Studies programs at Washington University in St. Louis. She is the author of "We Wear the Mask: African Americans Write American Literature," 1760-1870 (1997) and the book-length study "Fictions of the Harlem Renaissance," which appears in the sixth volume of "The Cambridge History of American Literature" (2002). She has also edited "New Essays on Harriet Jacobs and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" (1996; with Deborah Garfield), and "God Made Man," "Man Made the Slave: The Autobiography of George Teamoh" (1992; with F. N. Boney and R. L. Hume). Publisher Marketing: HARLEM RENAISSANCE: Five Novels of the 1920s leads off with Jean Toomer's "Cane" (1923), a unique fusion of fiction, poetry, and drama rooted in Toomer's experiences as a teacher in Georgia. Toomer's masterpiece was followed within a few years by a cluster of novels exploring black experience and the dilemmas of black identity in a variety of modes and from different angles. Claude McKay's "Home to Harlem" (1928), whose freewheeling, impressionistic, bawdy kaleidoscope of Jazz Age nightlife made it a best seller, traces the picaresque adventures of Jake, a World War I veteran, within and beyond Harlem. Nella Larsen's "Quicksand" (1928), the poignant, nuanced psychological portrait of a woman caught between the two worlds of her mixed Scandinavian and African American heritage; Jessie Redmon Fauset's "Plum Bun" (1928), the richly detailed account of a young art student's struggles to advance her career in a society full of obstacles both overt and insidiously concealed; and Wallace Thurman's "The Blacker the Berry" (1929), with its anguished, provocative look at prejudice and exclusion as it tells of a new arrival in Harlem searching for love, each in its distinct way testifies to the enduring power of the Harlem ferment. Review Citations:

Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2012 pg. 37 (EAN 9781598530995, Hardcover)

Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2014 pg. 400 (EAN 9781598530995, Hardcover)

Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2012 pg. 38 (EAN 9781598531015, Hardcover)

Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2014 pg. 400 (EAN 9781598531015, Hardcover)

Contributor Bio:  Zafar, Rafia Rafia Zafar is Professor of English and African and African American Studies, Washington Univerisity in St. Louis.