HARLEM RENAISSANCE, THE: Hub of African-American Culture, 1920-1930 (Circles of the Twentieth Century)

Book Description

The first book in the Circles of the Twentieth Century series which focuses on writers, artists, poets, hostesses and patrons who played a role in moderism as we know it. Watson explores the lively and fascinating people who helped bring about what became known as the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

Customer Reviews:

It's good.......2006-06-28

This is a worthwhile and well-researched book. It is more scholarly than I expected, and as a result, it took me a while to get fully engaged in. By the time I got to the section discussing the jazz artists, it was hard to put down. I was familiar with most of the writers and artists of the Harlem Renaissance to some extent. The book painted a more vivid picture of many of them, and gave keen perspectives on the social and economic milieu that helped to shape the period. It was fascinating to read about some of the interlocking relationships, in particular the relationships between Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Charlotte Mason. Examples such as this changed my notion of writing always being an insular profession. The men and women of the Harlem Renaissance benefited by each other's support as well as competition.

Outlined the experience but no depth.......1998-06-12

In my journey to explore the Harlem Renaissance, I started with this book. I felt the author gave a good basic view of the era but he left out the soul. He focused on six or seven primary personalities of the time, from Langston Hughes to Zora Neale Hurston, and tied the times into their existence. I was left feeling like there had to be more about the era. The author also chases around issues of major character homosexuality, stating it but not really being clear about it. I was ready for it to end.

This book is informative, entertaining, coherent........1998-02-07

I read this book in hardcover as well as several others for a paper I wrote. The author was able to take the disparate threads of musicians, artists, writers and benefactors who contributed to the Renaissance and weave together a chronology that contained pictures, specific information about the "hotspots" in Harlem and complete, sometimes intimate portraits of all concerned. If the Harlem Renaissance was ever to be depicted in a movie, this book would be a ready-made screen play. The hardcover edition is worth the extra money.

Their Eyes Were Watching God= A Great Book!!.......1997-11-03

I really enjoyed this book. I had to read it for an english class. At first I thought it was going to be hard to read and dumb due to the dialect, but as I read further into the book, I found out what a great book it was and why it was on the required reading list. I would greatly recommmend reading this book to any one who hasnot. It deals with a black woman's search for indeoendence over 25 years and 3 marriages. It is a great book and gets TWO thumbs up from me!!!

Gay Voices of the Harlem Renaissance (Blacks in the Diaspora)

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Informative
A valuable contribution to black and queer studies
Not So Quiet Gay Voices!!!
A Must for everyone interested in the Harlem Renaissance

Gay Voices of the Harlem Renaissance (Blacks in the Diaspora)
A. B. Christa Schwarz
Manufacturer: Indiana University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0253216079

Customer Reviews:

Informative.......2006-08-16

Honestly, the book is a a difficult read in some spots. Some items may require a second reading just to make sure the point is taken the way it is meant by Schwarz. That said, it is not an impossible read. Usually, Langston Hughes is the primary focus of such detailed scharlarship. This book examines Nugent, Cullen, and McKay who were, in their distinctive ways, just as important as Hughes in contributing to the Harlem Renaissance. All men were gay and dealed with their sexuality in print in a the mannor comfortable to them. Hughes, Cullen, and McKay employed Whitmanesque techniques and Nugent was completely unguarded in his sexual proclivities. For me, that Hughes and Nugent were both gay and yet showed different tastes in men and how they dealed with their sexuality is so interesting. The two men are the same and yet polar opposites of one another. Anyway, the reader will be happy with this book. Such work as Schawrz provides a new way of reading and re-reading these important figures in general literature and adds to the growing study of literature by gay African Americans, an under represented and all to often overlooked area of study.

A valuable contribution to black and queer studies.......2006-07-18

I'm not sure why the other two reviewers found Christa Schwarz's Gay Voices of the Harlem Renaissance difficult to read. I find Schwarz's prose clear and natural and her organizational scheme transparent. More important, Gay Voices of the Harlem Renaissance is a valuable contribution to black and queer studies--Schwarz's scholarship is impressive and thorough. Until this book appeared, the critical question of how queer genealogy intersected with the New Negro literary movement tended to be localized in debates over individual authors, such as the question of Langston Hughes's sexual orientation. But Schwarz's book does much more than merely consolidate archives into a single text. Gay Voices of the Harlem Renaissance performs the necessary labor of demonstrating that to talk of the Harlem Renaissance is to speak of the beginning of the queer revolution in the U.S., to suggest that among the emancipatory products of the New Negro was queer counterculture. The significance of Gay Voices of the Harlem Renaissance cannot be understated.

Not So Quiet Gay Voices!!!.......2005-07-06

A.B. Christa Schwarz's GAY VOICES OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE isn't an easy read. Barring the first two chapters, "Gay harlem and the Harlem Renaissance" and "Writing in the Harlem Renaissance....Burden of Representation and Sexual Dissidence," the remaining chapters will need a second or third reading for a coherent understanding for those interested in her discussion.

Ms. Schwarz looks at the work of three male writers from the period who are given their own chapters: Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Richard Bruce Nugent. Of these writers, Cullen, Hughes, and McKay are identified as using
Whitmanesque techniques to express in coded forms their desire for those members of their own sex. For the none initiated, Walt Whitman often changed male gender specific pronouns in his poetry to the feminine form for public consumption. Bruce Nugent was the only one of this group out and open, to some extent, with his sexuality in work and life, even during the down low days in his marriage of comformity.

Of the writers featured here, Countee Cullen is known to have had a few affairs with black and white men as Claude McKay. Cullen was the only one to envelope much of his work in the traditional European framework. Even his funeral many years later was staid in the European tradition of ceremony, contrary to the funeral of Langston Hughes who embraced his blackness in a funeral ceremony far, far away from the white American and
European traditional dogma and form. Langston Hughes wrote primarily for a black audience, celebrated his blackness with radical pride, and avoided with great distaste the traditional European style in the framework and subject matter of his body of work. This should come as no surprised after reading Arnold Rampersad's meticulously researched biographies of Hughes, particularily Vol. 2 where in three uncommom moments absent
of sexual prejudice Rampersad states Hughes's "preference" for black men as evidenced by Hughes's work and "life" (the label of Rampersad being entirely homophobic is not totally fair to him). Schwarz has this in mind when making the comment that in many of Hughes sea/sailor poems, race isn't specified because of the camaraderie of sailors of different nationalities which is in synch with Hughe's socialism poetry of the 1930's. Claude Mckay had the most in common with Hughes in terms of radical black pride and a like of the "low life" or common working class black, but his foreigner status as a Jamaican also made him an outsider to Harlem both figuratively and literally; he chose Greenwich Village as a primary residence and spurned many of the Harlem black intelligentsia. McKay was the only real bisexual of the bunch who had affairs with men and women, black and white, domestic and foreign. Yet, as many of his coded gay references appeared to indicate, he could be harsh toward white society in gerneral. Richard Bruce Nugent was the only openly gay black man of the men in this book who did not employ Whitmanesque techniques to conceal his interest. He was open and primarily showed an interest in white men and white Latin men in his work and life, the complete polar opposite of Langston Hughes. Sadly, Ms. Schwarz fails to grasp an accurate understanding of the work SMOKE, LILLIES, AND JADE whose protagonist is black, not white or of underminded race. This bias is disturbing and ignores on her part that its inclusion in the short lived FIRE!! that was devoted to works "by," "about," and "for" black Americans (i.e. Negros circa 1920's). Two, she fails to realize that "Beauty," the Latin object of desire in the story is a composite of Langston Hughes, Harold Jackman, and Valintino.

The book isn't an easy read, but it is a worthwhile read providing one shows patience and at least a little knowledge of the subjects other than that of their surface persona. Incidentally, the cover is based on Cullen's poem "Tableau" where a black and white man are portrayed as walking hand in hand at the surprise and disgust of onlookers, black and white. The painting was designed by Jacob Lawrence.

A Must for everyone interested in the Harlem Renaissance.......2003-09-04

A. B. Christa Schwarz wrote a really learned book. Maybe it's the only way a German scholar can write. Not always easy to read it's a interesting study to read not only for literary historians. The study is a must for everyone interested in the Harlem Renaissance as a literary phenomenon. Schwarz focuses on Countze Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay and Richard Bruce Nugent. Readers learn a lot about Alain Locke as well. Locke played a leading role in the Harlem Renaissance. Maybe Schwartz' next book will tell us more about Locke. We are waiting for it.

In Search of Nella Larsen: A Biography of the Color Line

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The Wrong Woman
Unveiling Nella Larsen
Thought provoking and well researched

In Search of Nella Larsen: A Biography of the Color Line
George Hutchinson
Manufacturer: Belknap Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0674021800

Book Description

Born to a Danish seamstress and a black West Indian cook in one of the Western Hemisphere's most infamous vice districts, Nella Larsen (1891-1964) lived her life in the shadows of America's racial divide. She wrote about that life, was briefly celebrated in her time, then was lost to later generations--only to be rediscovered and hailed by many as the best black novelist of her generation. In his search for Nella Larsen, the "mystery woman of the Harlem Renaissance," George Hutchinson exposes the truths and half-truths surrounding this central figure of modern literary studies, as well as the complex reality they mask and mirror. His book is a cultural biography of the color line as it was lived by one person who truly embodied all of its ambiguities and complexities.

Author of a landmark study of the Harlem Renaissance, Hutchinson here produces the definitive account of a life long obscured by misinterpretations, fabrications, and omissions. He brings Larsen to life as an often tormented modernist, from the trauma of her childhood to her emergence as a star of the Harlem Renaissance. Showing the links between her experiences and her writings, Hutchinson illuminates the singularity of her achievement and shatters previous notions of her position in the modernist landscape. Revealing the suppressions and misunderstandings that accompany the effort to separate black from white, his book addresses the vast consequences for all Americans of color-line culture's fundamental rule: race trumps family.

Customer Reviews:

The Wrong Woman.......2006-12-03

I enjoyed Dr. Hutchinson's book on Nella Larsen, the enigmatic nurse who wrote two marvelous novels in mid-career and then, took up her tents and wrote no more. Wow, does he lay into Larsen's two previous biographers! Sometimes it seems as though the whole purpose of him writing this book is to serve as a massive corrective to what he sees as their stupidity, their errors, their evasions, their sloppy thinking. This gives the book a lot of energy, and perhaps prompted Hutchinson to perform some brilliant feats of detective work. For example, he was able to prove that Nella Larsen actually did live in Denmark, for others had doubted her stories of a childhood in Copenhagen, seeing the purported fantasy as yet another manifestation of her self-hatred and the way she wanted to be white, not black.

It is thrilling indeed to get the whole picture of this complex life, even at the expense of the two previous biographers who must now forever lay at Hutchinson's feat, their every inanity exposed to a sneering public. And yet, as he knows, without these two having done so much groundwork, such as locating and interviewing friends of Larsen's now lost to us through death, he wouldn't have been able to accomplish zilch. So his triumph is clouded by a blur of ironies, as I'm sure he appreciates, ironies worthy of a Larsen novel.

I enjoyed especially Hutchinson's calm treatment of Larsen's final years, which saw her leave literature and the "glitterati" of the Van Vechten circle behind, in favor of a nursing career, which most people have seen as a terrible tragic turn of fate, and now under Hutchinson's treatment, he's very persuasive that being a nurse isn't, perhaps, such a bad thing at all, for nurses help people nearly as much as, perhaps more than, we novelists do. He is occasionally overgiven to speculation, such as his suggestion that "it is not unlikely" that Larsen chose night duty (while nursing) because she could "control and cover her drinking habit better that way." Why is it not unlikely? Does this mean that it is likely? How do you know, Dr. Hutchinson? And what about the part where, because one personage receives an unexpected visit on a Saturday, does that indicate that the visitor most likely worked on weekdays? Excuse me?

All in all, essential reading for anyone interested in either the Harlem Renaissance or in the life of American nurses in midcentury.

Unveiling Nella Larsen.......2006-07-20

Nella Larsen was an enigmatic writer of the Harlem Renaissance, whose background has been highly speculated by other biographers, Charles Larson and Thadious Davis. George Hutchinson's superb biography of Nella Larsen puts to rest a lot of the speculation about Ms. Larsen's background. Mr. Hutchinson unveils some of the more complicated issues regarding Larsen's relationship with her mother and family, her life in Denmark, and her obscurity as a writer after the Harlem Renaissance. By thoroughly examining the papers of Carl Van Vechten, passenger ship logs, and other archives untouched by previous biographers, Hutchinson gives voice to the complicated negotiations regarding race that plagued Larsen during an era when the color line figured so prominently in most American's lives. Hauntingly told and beautifully written, this biography of Nella Larsen is essential to not only putting her life in perspective but also for enriching any reading or teaching of Larsen's novels. Hutchinson places Larsen, the writer, and her works within the center of the Harlem Renaissance, and he contextualizes Larsen and her work within the larger modernist moment when Larsen meets Frederico Garcia Lorcas during his brief stay in New York when he was studying at Columbia. Even biographers of Lorca have neglected to put a face to the "Negroes" that Lorca wrote about as being the only authentic and uncorrupted aspect of U.S. culture and life that he found palatable. Hutchinson's biography paves the way for refiguring Larsen and the significance of her work to both the African American and American literary canons.

Thought provoking and well researched .......2006-07-02

This very elegant and academically excellent work was thought provoking. It should prove of great interest to anyone interested in the reality of life for black women facing the societal restrictions of the past. It provides both a unique perspective and a story that draws the reader to this dynamic historical figure and her place in history. The author provides extensive documentation of his resources and uses even the most ordinary of life's details to show the influence of color on the life and times of an extraordinary woman.

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Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance
Jr., Houston A. Baker
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0226035255

Book Description

"Mr. Baker perceives the Harlem Renaissance as a crucial moment in a movement, predating the 1920's, when Afro-Americans embraced the task of self-determination and in so doing gave forth a distinctive form of expression that still echoes in a broad spectrum of 20th-century Afro-American arts. . . . Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance may well become Afro-America's 'studying manual.'"—Tonya Bolden, New York Times Book Review

Harlem Stomp! A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance

Average customer rating:

Geared for kids but still informative
Young adults (and even older ones!) will love this book

Harlem Stomp! A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance
Laban Carrick Hill
Manufacturer: Little, Brown Young Readers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0316814113

Customer Reviews:

Geared for kids but still informative.......2007-08-09

This seems geared for the junior high school crowd, but there are still great pictures and it's pretty stuffed with information. Worthwhile buy.

Young adults (and even older ones!) will love this book.......2004-03-04

This book is a visual feast and a joy to browse; the graphic design captures the energy of the Harlem Renaissance. It's like a scrapbook jammed with "rent party" tickets, dinner programs, book covers, letters, playbills, song lyrics and more. There is something here to capture the interest of even reluctant readers.

But the text also shines. The story of how and why Harlem came to be is told clearly and without mincing words: we learn the glorious achievements in art, music, theater, literature and just plain survival, but we also learn of the racism haunting the era, and the infighting within the Black community itself. I think readers will appreciate this honest, realistic approach, which brings the era to life.

Book Description

Harlem Speaks showcases the lives and works of the artists, writers and intellectuals behind the stunning outburst of African American culture in the three decades after World War I. In the tradition of the New York Times bestseller Poetry Speaks, the book combines each subject's key works with biographical and critical essays by leading Harlem Renaissance authority Cary Wintz and other experts. The integrated audio CDs feature music, poetry and literary readings, interviews, radio broadcasts, discussions and speeches, bringing the Harlem of legend to vibrant life once again.

Hear, see and read the best of:
Langston Hughes Claude McKay Zora Neale Hurston Richard Wright Duke Ellington Ethel Waters Josephine Baker Marcus Garvey Alain Locke and more

The audio also includes never-before-released interviews conducted by Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Levering Lewis. Evocative and encompassing, Harlem Speaks places you at the zenith of this vital cultural movement.

Harlem Renaissance: Art of Black America

Average customer rating:

A wonderful overview.
Wonderful!

Harlem Renaissance: Art of Black America
Mary Schmidt Campbell
Manufacturer: Harry N. Abrams
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0810981289

Customer Reviews:

A wonderful overview........2002-08-05

This is a very nice looking book that not only provides context about the Harlem Renaissance and the proliferation of Black artists during the 20's and 30's, but it also includes many reproductions of some of the period's most representative works. From the cover photo which is a copy William Johnson's "Boy in a Vest," to the James VanDerZee's striking black and white photography, to the sculptures of Meta Warwick, the reader is treated to many examples of the visual arts. There are also essays and poems by the Countee Cullen and other writers of the time. This is a good introduction to the period and is suitable for children and young adults. And old adults too for that matter!

Wonderful!.......2000-06-01

This is a great book for someone interested in learning about the Harlem Renaissance. The author presents vital information in an accessible way, and illustrates the diversity and complexity that is American Art.

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A Great Survey Of One Of America's More Notable Creative Waves...
The Crowded Party
O.k.
The Roaring Twenties- a culturally vital era
A zesty account

When Harlem Was in Vogue
David Levering Lewis
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0140263349

Book Description

Tremendous optimism filled the streets of Harlem during the decade and a half following World War I. Langston Hughes, Eubie Blake, Marcus Garvey, Zora Neale Hurston, Paul Robeson, and countless others began their careers; Afro-America made its first appearance on Broadway; musicians
found new audiences in the chic who sought out the exotic in Harlem's whites-only nightclubs; riotous rent parties kept economic realities at bay; and A'Lelia Walker and Carl Van Vechten outdid each other with glittering "integrated" soirees.
When Harlem Was in Vogue recaptures the excitement of those times, displaying the intoxicating hope that black Americans could create important art and compel the nation to recognize their equality. In this critically-acclaimed study of race assimilation, David Levering Lewis focuses on the
creation and manipulation of an arts and belles-lettres culture by a tiny Afro-American elite, striving to enhance "race relations" in America, and ultimately, the upward mobility of the Afro-American masses. He demonstrates how black intellectuals developed a systematic program to bring artists to
Harlem, conducting nation-wide searches for black talent and urging WASP and Jewish philanthropists (termed "Negrotarians" by Zora Neale Hurston) to help support writers.
This extensively-researched, fascinating volume reveals the major significance of the Renaissance as a movement which sprang up in Harlem but lent its mood to the entire era, and as a culturally-vital period whose after-effects continue to add immeasurably to the richness and character of
American life.

Customer Reviews:

A Great Survey Of One Of America's More Notable Creative Waves..........2006-09-16

I've read David Levering Lewis' WHEN HARLEM WAS IN VOGUE several times, and am always fascinated by it. As previous reviewers note, the writing is exacting and very detailed, but I found that this methodical approach very vividly recreates the world of the Harlem Renaissance. It sent me back into many of the writers, some still well-known, many unfortunately not.

The book doesn't try to answer all the questions it raises, and it shouldn't - the subject is far too historically rich for one book. Still, the suggestions of class divisions within African-American communities are danced around here, and Lewis could have ventured a bit more deeply into that.

And his cutoff with the Great Depression also seems a bit neat: Harlem's notorious decline is a subject unto itself, but Lewis does devote a little time to some of the roots of that decline - evident even in the waning days of the renaissance.

Still, there are many provocative accomplishemnts here - you will find the genesis of many strands of African-American art and political thought here, and this great, vast introductory work is an excellent jumping-off point for further exploration.

-David Alston

The Crowded Party.......2005-11-23

The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s opened a fascinating chapter in American life, heralding the first time African-Americans were taken seriously as poets, novelists, painters, composers, and intellectuals by a broad white audience. David Levering Lewis is maybe too close to the figures he talks about to do them justice. Reading his book is like being at a crowded cocktail party with a friend who seems to know everyone and only has time for brief introductions before moving on to the next guest. You get just a glimpse of Renaissance luminaries like Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Toomer, Jessie Fauset, Wallace Thurman, and the imperious W.E.B. Du Bois before they disappear back into the swim of names.

On the upside, Lewis does a fine job of shedding light on the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of the African-American elites--the 'Talented Tenth'--who hoped to use the new vogue for all things black as a way of dissolving race prejudice. Insofar as the book has an argument, it's that Harlem grandees like Alain Locke, James Weldon Johnson, Charles S. Johnson, and W.E.B Du Bois who saw intellectual achievement as an antidote to racism learned a hard lesson with the onset of the Depression, where economic reality squashed their assimilationist dreams and a new generation of black intellectuals opted for Communism over poetry.

The book left me wanting to know more about the white supporters of the New Negro Movement--patrons like Carl Van Vechten, the Spingarns, Julius Roswenwald, and the redoubtable Charlotte Osgood Mason, "Godmother" to Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston--who held the purse strings and much of the power in deciding which expressions of Harlem life made it to the mainstream. The louche world of jazz, nightclubs, liquor, rent parties, razor fights and skin-baring dancers that largely defined Harlem in the white imagination also goes pretty much unexplored in favor of Top Tenth aspirations to join the upper middle class. There's a disappointing reticence too about homosexuality among the era's leading lights. Still, it's a great book for piquing interest in some of the tensions and achievements that went into making Harlem the heart of the Roaring Twenties

O.k........2005-09-13

Interesting to see about the actual people who were involved in the Harlem Renaissance, but the author uses so many names that it gets confusing.

The Roaring Twenties- a culturally vital era.......2005-01-05

Harlem's gaudiest and best-known nightspot was a "whites only" nightclub serving Vaudevillian-style black entertainment to the white patrons that flooded into Harlem from downtown Manhattan. Everybody was swinging and boozing. They were high times and they were really hopping. Alcohol sales and consumption climbed rapidly. Nightclubs, cabarets and after-hours clubs, on the strip of 133rd Street between Lenox and Seventh Avenues, thrived with the influx of white trade. Jazz, big bands, blues, and high-steppin', "high-yeller" girls set the tone. Money flowed in like water and the Mob's power grew. In the midst of all that was occurring, black artists, intellectuals and social activists flourished throughout Harlem in what is now called The Harlem Renaissance. Very well researched vital to learning about the richness of American life and character

A zesty account.......2004-02-21

Claude McKay and Jean Toomer helped to launch the Harlem Renaissance and chose to live elsewhere. Sterling Brown denied that a Harlem Renaissance had ever existed. It began as a somewhat forced phenomenon.

DuBois believed the history of the world was the history of groups. War experiences spurred people to seek decisive change. Unfortunately a number of racial incidents took place directly after Word War I. The historian Carter Woodson was witness to a riot in Washington D.C.

Black Harlem ran from 130th to 145th Streets. Jazz and blues in Harlem were produced by persons from the Great Migration--Mamie Smith, Perry Bradford, and others. There were new stars in Harlem. Claude McKay and James Weldon Johnson became personal friends. MacKay's HARLEM SHADOWS appeared in 1922. Countee Cullen said that on the whole he liked CANE by Jean Toomer. Countee Cullen's only serious rival in Harlem was Langston Hughes.

Alain Locke and Charles Johnson, a sociologist, made contributions to the intellectual life of the Harlem leadership. Arna Bontemps and Zora Neale Thurston were also notable figures. Many motives animated the Lost Generation Caucasian supporters. The motives included guilt, Christianity, inherited abolitionism.

There were rent parties in Harlem and other evidence of stress and overcrowding. Nonetheless the twenties was a time of artistic triumph with such musical personalities James P. Johnson, Willie the Lion Smith, Fats Waller, and Duke Ellington seeking and finding engagements. There were success stories. Even in the Depression people were generally well-dressed and happy. Harlem was filled with strivers and professionals.

1925 was year one of the Harlem Renaissance. James Weldon Johnson's ancestors had been free, literate, and prosperous before the Civil War. He and his brother composed an opera. The mid twenties solidified the Harlem Renaissance. Harlem was Afro-America's Paris. LULU BELLE (1926) sent whites to Harlem in unprecedented numbers. Factually speaking, though, most of Harlem was sober and hardworking.

The Rosenwald Fund and the Harmon Fund were influential by promoting and rewarding African American artistic achievement. Alain Locke had been a sort of custodian of the Harlem Renaissance. Claude McKay's last novel appeared in 1933. Sugar Hill, Strivers' Row and the Dunbar were landmarks of the Renaissance. The last novel of the Renaissance was Zora Neale Thurston's JONAH'S GOURD VINE.

The book covers other topics interestingly, revealing many bits of information previously unknown to this reader. Photographs are included and an appendix of sources.

Average customer rating:

Excellent source for the Harlem Renaissance writers

After some initial readings & browsing, it's the bomb

Very well put together.

The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader (African American History (Penguin))
David Lewis
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Cane Cane

The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of African-American Culture, 1920-1930 (Circles of the Twentieth Century Series , No 1)

When Harlem Was in Vogue

The New Negro : Voices of the Harlem Renaissance

The Complete Fiction of Nella Larsen: Passing, Quicksand, and The Stories

ASIN: 0140170367

Amazon.com

This collection magnificently represents the great voices of this era. The volume includes the work of some forty-five Renaissance figures: short fiction and self-contained novel excerpts by Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen, Wallace Thurman, and Jean Toomer; poems by Gwendolyn Bennett, Countee Cullen, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Langston Hughes, and Claude McKay; essays, manifestos, speeches, and nostalgic reminiscences by Romare Bearden, W. E. B. Dubois, Marcus Garvey, James Weldon Johnson, Alain Locke, and Richard Wright.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent source for the Harlem Renaissance writers.......2007-03-09

This is a fantastic source for essays by many of the Harlem Renaissance writers. Every convievable writer is highlighted in this book, from W.E.B. Dubois, to Alain Locke, to George S. Schuyler. Their most influential essays are presented in this book.

After some initial readings & browsing, it's the bomb.......2005-08-02

The poetry is really good, only I wish there were a little more. The prose writings have some really excellent sources. Good for an educational text for students covering the period.

Very well put together........2000-06-11

I give this book five stars because it has a wonderful cross-section of female and male Harlem Renaissance writers, and also because it includes fiction, prose (articles and essays), and poetry. This volume is nicely compiled, and it is a lovely companion to similar anthologies, such as "Trouble the Water," which is an anthology of black poetry from slavery through modern times. Also, because the Harlem Renaissance happened so long ago, The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader includes works and excerpts from works that are seemingly out of print, such as a selection by Carter G. Woodson. This book has a lovely variety of practically every genre of literature, and is a must for any African-American studies scholar, though it is a capable volume for any student of literature, period. The only possible drawback of this book is that it contains a lot of excerpts. If you enjoy a certain excerpt (and it is almost guaranteed that you will), finding a copy of its parent body of work will become frustratingly high on your list of priorities. The Harlem Renaissance Reader is truly reccommended.

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Harlem Renaissance, The
Jim Haskins
Manufacturer: Millbrook Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

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ASIN: 1562945653

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