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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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Double-Take: A Revisionist Harlem Renaissance Anthology
Manufacturer: Rutgers University Press
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Cane
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When Harlem Was in Vogue
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Black No More : A Novel (Modern Library Paperbacks)
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The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader (African American History (Penguin))
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Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral
ASIN: 0813529301 |
Book Description
Of all the images to arise from the Harlem Renaissance, the most thought-provoking were those of the mulatta. For some writers, artists, and filmmakers, these images provided an alternative to the stereotypes of black womanhood and a challenge to the color line. For others, they represented key aspects of modernity and race coding central to the New Negro Movement. Due to the mulatta's frequent ability to pass for white, she represented a variety of contradictory meanings that often transcended racial, class, and gender boundaries. Portraits of the New Negro Woman investigates the visual and literary images of black femininity that occurred between the two world wars. Cherene Sherrard-Johnson traces the origins and popularization of these new representations in the art and literature of the Harlem Renaissance and how they became an ambiguous symbol of racial uplift constraining African American womanhood in the early twentieth century.
In this engaging narrative, the author uses the writings of Nella Larsen and Jessie Fauset as well as the work of artists like Archibald Motley and William H. Johnson to illuminate the centrality of the mulatta by examining a variety of competing arguments about race in the Harlem Renaissance and beyond.
Customer Reviews:
Women's Studies: American and African American.......2007-05-10
Cherene Sherrard-Johnson is a remarkably talented young lady who has produced a magnificently written book, Portraits of the New Negro Woman. This should be required reading for American and African American studies. I look forward to her next publication.
Book Description
The first collection ever assembled of the most distinctive, influential, and widely appreciated novels and short stories of the Harlem Renaissance, this anthology opens a window on one of the most extraordinary assertions of racial self-consciousness in Western literature. With an insightful introduction to provide historical context and a lucid biographical headnote about each of the authors, this volume brings together under one cover the Harlem Renaissance literature most widely taught. Short stories include "Sweat" (1926) and "The Gilded Six-Bits" (1933) by Zora Neale Hurston, Rudolph Fisher's "Miss Cynthie" (1933), and "The Blues I'm Playing" (1934) by Langston Hughes. The novels Home to Harlem (1928) by Claude McKay and Nella Larsen's Quicksand (1929) are featured in their entirety, along with major selections from Jean Toomer's Cane. Added features include a chapter from Wallace Thurman's Infants of the Spring (1932), a notorious roman a clef about the Harlem Renaissance, and Rudolph Fisher's half tongue-in-cheek "Introduction to Contemporary Harlemese, Expurgated and Abridged" (1928). For students and teachers alike, there can be no more effective or enjoyable way of exploring the intellectual concerns, the ideological perspectives, and the artistic innovations of the Harlem Renaissance.
Customer Reviews:
History Revisited.......2005-01-15
EBONY RISING is a preeminent collection of short fiction written during the Harlem Renaissance Era. What makes this book stand out from other anthologies with similar subject matter is that the book features a well-planned organizational structure and includes many lesser known writers and works. Beginning with the preface, editor Craig Gable showcases his breadth of knowledge of the era and it is clear that this book will not only be good reading, but also educational.
The selections are organized by the year of publication, with each year (or group of years) serving as its own section. At the beginning of each section a timeline of significant historical events and African-American literary accomplishments is included to help readers get a sense of the times in which the writings were published. In addition to including writers often omitted from anthologies, such as Eloise Bibb Thompson, and J. Saunders Redding, the collection has a good balance between male and female featured authors. At the end of the book there is a detailed listing of sources for further reading, brief biographic sketches of the featured authors, and a handy chart that highlights many of the major themes in the included works.
EBONY RISING is one of the best anthologies I have read. With clear organization, a unique selection of authors, and the inclusion of historical information, this book is a must-have for anyone interested in literature, particularly those with an interest in African-American literature or the Harlem Renaissance. This book is a refreshing yet educational treat.
Reviewed by Stacey Seay
of The RAWSISTAZ™ Reviewers
What a treasury!.......2004-09-11
I like everything about this collection: the fact that it encompasses 52 stories covering over 27 years and a wide variety of content and styles; is gender balanced; presents works by both the famous and the lesser knowns beyond the actual boundaries of New York (plus lesser-known stories by the famous); and its chronological arrangement that allows the era to "grow." With the help of the author's preface, I dove right into the stories not previously anthologized, like Mercedes Gilbert's hilarious "Why Adam Ate the Apple" (with the memorable line "He started to rave, and jes' raised Cain.") I was not disappointed. Additional useful resources include a history of the era and a checklist of common issues, topics and plot components. This indispensable resource for the study of American literature belongs on every library shelf.
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The Novels of the Harlem Renaissance: Twelve Black Writers, 1923-1933
Amritjit Singh
Manufacturer: Pennsylvania State University Press
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ASIN: 0271012080 |
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Black Orpheus: Music in African American Fiction from the Harlem Renaissance to Toni Morrison (Garland Reference Library of the Humanities)
Saadi A. Simawe
Manufacturer: Routledge
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ASIN: 0815331231 |
Book Description
In twentieth-century African American fiction, music has been elevated to the level of religion primarily because of its Orphic, magical power to unsettle oppressive realities, to liberate the soul and to create, at least temporarily, a medium of freedom. This collection explores literary invocations of music from the Harlem Renaissance to Toni Morrison.
Customer Reviews:
Difficult (2.5 stars).......2007-03-11
I write this review with the realization that it is likely to be unpopular, nevertheless, I found the book to be very trying. While I can appreciate the modernist approach which was employed years before its time, the experimental nature of the writing had my head spinning. The text itself is a mixed bag that includes not only prose, but poetry and drama as well. Toomer insisted on these pieces being put together to form a novel, but I cannot help but feel many of the inclusions would have faired better standing alone. In my particular reading experience, I found that many of the pieces do not interlock or even coincide, which produces a sort of start-and-stop reading ordeal. There is simply no fluidity in the text.
Toomer was of mixed heritage, so the book is rife with ambivalence and a proverbial tug-of-war between "light and dark." It has been pointed out that Toomer was very much influenced by Picasso's cubism and worked to recreate this in his literature. As far as I know, Toomer and Gertrude Stein are the only two to have done this, and the effect is arrantly vertiginous in both cases.
In literary circles, this book is considered a must-read in African-American literature, and for that reason, it should be read and contemplated. However, if you are looking for leisure reading, I would suggest something else. The book is only 112 pages long, but I found that it somehow seemed rather "Victorian" in length. It is by no means fast.
In defense of the book, I think my problem with it is a result of preferring prose over poetry and drama. If you are a reader that likes all genres equally, you may find this considerably more enjoyable.
Suggested Af/Am Lit: Wright's Black Boy, Morrison's Song of Solomon, Ellison's Invisible Man, Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition, and Moody's Coming of Age in Mississippi.
Beautiful.......2006-01-15
the first few chapters alone is worth having this book in your library. It reads like smooth passionate music, writing prose like poetry, capturing moments in history, in the past of our country, that many do not often think about. this book is amazing.
Conflicted and Lyrical.......2004-09-11
There appear to be several tangled threads in CANE that join the three parts of the book together. The first thread unifying the collection of poetry and prose is the way it was put together. In book one you have the narrator observing rural negroes in the south. In book two you have the narrator express-ing the discontent of urban negroes. Then, in book three, you have old Kabnis, a northern negro, trying to escape his pain by returning to his roots in rural Georgia. Coming full-circle. And yet not. Part Two should come first, with its discontented youth, then "Kabnis", then Part One. Why does Toomer choose to progress from spiritual unity to disunity? Is it because the book truly represents a cycle which has no beginning and no end? A clue to this is in two poems, "Reapers" and "Harvest Song". Both are written on related topics, and yet "Reapers" is the first poem of the book, and "Harvest Song" the last. In "Reapers" a rat is injured by a scythe, and yet "the blade, blooded-stained, continues cutting weeds and shade" oblivious to or uncaring of the rat's injuries and pain. In "Harvest Song" the narrator is a reaper who, at the end of the day, with his work still unfinshed, fears his own hunger so much that he distracts himself with pain, "...My pain is sweet...It will not bring me knowledge of my hunger." What, exactly, is it that Toomer's characters hunger for?
Another thread appears to me to be the striving for unity. This desire for unity is expressed in the ways in which the men and women in CANE strive toward unity in their relation-ships. Admittedly, they fail miserably. The women in the book are terribly one-sided--sex objects that are either passive, as with Karintha and Fern and Avey, or active, as with Carma and Louisa and Bona. However, for all their being available physically, the females Toomer portrays in his cameos are untouchable or out of reach spiritually. The men are also one-sided--rational and yet passionate, often overcome by lust and rage. These probably function to demonstrate Toomer's personal views on what men and women are, and how their desires for unity in healthy relation-ships produces a significant amount of pain as a result of their oppositeness.
Pain is yet another thread that unifies the poetry, sketches, stories and drama of CANE. After all is experienced, the pain is what is left, the only significant fruit of their struggles. In Part One, the pain everyone suffers seems to be symbolized by the ever-present cane. The cane, which can cut the skin, must be ground, the juice boiled and cooled, in order to obtain it sweetness. Is the pain which the characters savor the sweetness in their lives? And if so, wouldn't the cane also represent the sweetness (pain) in their lives? In Part Two, which takes place in the urban North, the Negroes live repressed, frustrated, and sadly warped lives. The pain is intellectualized, yet it is still there, doubly so. Is this a result of being separated from the soil--that which is perceived to be source of their spirituality--as well as their failure to form meaningful relationships? The pain in "Kabnis" is more incoherent, the pain of an urban negro who has returned to his roots only to find that he cannot accept them, is alienated by them.
It is impossible to discuss all of the tangled threads that weave CANE into the powerfully moving and unorthodox novel of Toomer's voyage of self-discovery. It is often incoherent, filled with evocative recurrent images, and powerful character sketches that leave the reader unfulfilled, confused, and hungry for more. Perhaps it is Toomer's own hunger, expressed in his writing, that the reader picks up. If there was more to the novel, perhaps one could pin down the more elusive points. Then again, perhaps not.
A MUST-HAVE BOOK; BUY IT.......2004-06-10
One of the best books I have read. Just don't try to categorize it. Perhaps it is the freedom from a "format" that makes it so creative. He tells little stories about people with such power and reflections on the sexual the spiritual the racial the natural world. It is prose poetry. I have not even finished reading it yet! I urge you to by this edition which includes critical essays on CANE. Not that they can ever truly dissect it -- that's what makes it so great. So, he didn't consider himself black -- probably neither does Michael Jackson -- and he's still a genious. The WORK is what is important.
Truth through Words.......2004-04-17
Women play a dramatic role throughout Jean Toomer's eyebrow raising novel, Cane. In Cane, Toomer depicts the lives of many women who are misunderstood by the world around them. Through each dramatic story we are introduced to different characters that all tell a story, a story that spells out the racism and virtual element of sadness that has overcome Georgia and everything in it's path. Cane is not only a novel, but also a learning lesson of the changing times and real true to life struggles that innocent victims had to endure. After experiencing cane, we are introduced to another world that we have never known, forever changing our mindset of the world around us. Not only was Cane a dramatic learning tool, but also an irreplaceable piece of literature that will forever remain in our thoughts and our minds generation after generation touching each reader that is lucky enough to have inhaled it's beauty. One of Cane's greatest acheivements is in the way you have to find the beauty within each character through understanding Georgia's mindset. Toomer truly challenges our minds to relate to each and every character, be it man or woman, and understand and appreciate each and every struggle and hardship, and once we can feel their pain we too have a little purple in our hearts.
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