Harlem Renaissance in literature

Origins

The Harlem Renaissance had social and historical causes, among them the arrival to Harlem of many rural, Southern, African Americans who were migrating to the urban North in search of better economic and social conditions. World War I and the generally improving economy of the 1920’s inspired hope of finding jobs and a better life in New York City. Most of the writers, artists, and musicians of the Harlem Renaissance were born elsewhere. Their creations did not always center on Harlem, either, but the acknowledged focal point of African American culture during the 1920’s and 1930’s was Harlem.

Redefining African American Identity

Harlem Renaissance writers boldly rejected prevalent stereotypes that portrayed African Americans as nothing more than pitiable societal problems. Harlem Renaissance writers blended awareness of their racial heritage and progress with their considerable literary talents in efforts to present realistic images of black life. Harlem Renaissance authors built upon the rich tradition of strong, persevering, African American characters established in nineteenth century slave narratives and autobiographies by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and others. Writers of the Harlem Renaissance also could discredit literary stereotypes by recalling fiction by William Wells Brown, Harriet Wilson, and Charles Waddell Chesnutt, among others.

Unlike earlier African American writers, Harlem Renaissance authors found that their works received greater exposure; during the 1920’s and early 1930’s, major publishers produced books by African Americans with an unprecedented frequency. Black writers had improved opportunities to accomplish two major goals: to portray African American life accurately and to promote African American culture. Collectively, works of the Harlem Renaissance provide a panorama of early twentieth century black life. Characters vary from ones whose deeds are virtuous to those whose actions are questionable, although in general, Harlem Renaissance literature presents more upright characters. They represent all levels of society, socially and economically. For the first time in American literature, there are consistent attempts to portray African Americans in urban locations. The works of Harlem Renaissance writers proudly display the great variety in African American life and assert that regardless of their status, African Americans are worthy of respect.

Harlem Renaissance writers wrote considerably about the double identity of being black and American. This dual identity could be cause for rejoicing, as in James Weldon Johnson and John Rosamond Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing” (1900), known as the black national anthem. Other times being black and American could be cause for despair, as many African American World War I veterans discovered upon their return to the United States. The veterans hoped that their service to their country would result in better employment and housing opportunities. Instead, the veterans were still treated as second-class citizens. Harlem Renaissance writers recorded the pleasures and pains resulting from dual identity.

Mentors

Four prominent visionaries articulated the need for an African American awakening, created influential works, and promoted the works of new and younger authors. The most influential mentor was W. E. B. Du Bois, who was a prolific writer, civil rights leader, and proponent of racial uplift ideology, as he put forth in The Souls of Black Folk (1903). Du Bois, who called for an African American literary renaissance as early as 1920, served as editor of Crisis, one of the two major black periodicals that included Harlem Renaissance fiction and poetry. The second periodical, Opportunity, was edited by Charles S. Johnson, who was also instrumental in promoting Harlem Renaissance writers. Du Bois’ novel Dark Princess: A Romance (1928), published during the Harlem Renaissance, presents an African American protagonist who realizes that racism extends beyond America and that people around the world should unite to end racial oppression.

Another architect of the movement was Jessie Redmon Fauset, who believed that portrayals of African Americans must be written by African Americans. As literary editor for Crisis from 1919 to 1926, Fauset promoted the talents of Langston Hughes, Countée Cullen, and others. As author of four novels, Fauset shows the impact of race and gender limitations on African American women. Her novels, often about middle-class blacks (a first), have such themes as racial discrimination in the North, racial identity, heritage, miscegenation, and blacks passing for white. Fauset’s There Is Confusion (1924) was the first novel by a woman to be published during the Harlem Renaissance. Her other novels are Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral (1929), The Chinaberry Tree: A Novel of American Life (1931), and Comedy: American Style (1933). University professor and literary critic Alain Locke played a pivotal role in the Harlem Renaissance. He edited a special issue of Survey Graphic (March, 1925), a magazine that until then had ignored black culture. It became the magazine’s most widely read issue. Among the authors included were Cullen, Du Bois, Angelina Grimké, Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, Anne Spencer, Jean Toomer, and Walter White. Building upon the success of the Survey Graphic issue, Locke edited an anthology, The New Negro (1925), an expanded version of the magazine issue that includes additional Harlem Renaissance writers such as Arna Bontemps, Fauset, Zora Neale Hurston, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Helene Johnson, Willis Richardson, and Eric Walrond. The New Negro remains the Harlem Renaissance’s landmark publication.

The fourth inspirer of the Harlem Renaissance was James Weldon Johnson. Originally published anonymously, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man (1912) was reprinted in 1927 with Johnson’s name. The novel involves a character’s regretting his decision to pass for white after witnessing a lynching, yet he is afraid to reveal his true identity. Johnson’s greatest Harlem Renaissance contributions were poetic. The Book of American Negro Poetry (1922) is the first major collection of black poetry. God’s Trombones (1927) transforms seven folk sermons into poetry. Included in this volume is Johnson’s well-known “The Creation.”

Zora Neale Hurston was criticized during her lifetime for not focusing her writing on the racial uplift championed by Du Bois and other writers and thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance. In her essay, “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” (1928) she responds to critics who felt that she did not adequately deal with racism in her work by setting forth her thoughts on her own liberation as an African American woman: “I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes . . . . No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.” In a 1936 interview with Nick Aaron Ford, Hurston famously said, “I have ceased to think in terms of race; I think only in terms of individuals.” Some of the most notable writers of the Harlem Renaissance, including Locke, who was her mentor, Richard Wright, and Bontemps criticized her portrayal of African American lives and use of African American colloquial language—as spoken in Hurston's hometown of Eatonville, Georgia—in Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937, technically after the Harlem Renaissance period), in which protagonist Janie Crawford tells her life story to her best friend, Pheoby Watson. Though the novel met with mixed reviews and was not popular with African American readers upon its publication, it was rediscovered by poet and novelist Alice Walker in the 1970s. It had its own renaissance in 1978, when it was put back into print, and has become widely influential since then.

Poetry

The era’s poets included Sterling Brown, Grimké, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Helene Johnson, and Spencer. Major poets included Cullen, McKay, and Hughes. Cullen published three volumes of poetry during the era: Color (1925), Copper Sun (1927), and The Black Christ and Other Poems (1929). Poems such as “From the Dark Tower,” “Heritage,” and “Yet Do I Marvel” reflect Cullen’s concerns about racial identity and his role as a poet. McKay’s two volumes of poetry published during the time of the Harlem Renaissance are Spring in New Hampshire and Other Poems (1920) and Harlem Shadows (1922), which has been heralded as one of the era’s finest works. Much of McKay’s and Cullen’s poetry focuses on the dual-identity issue and the notion that blacks are aliens in America. The militant “If We Must Die” remains McKay’s most widely known poem. The most famous Harlem Renaissance writer, who was also called the poet laureate of Harlem, was Hughes. A prolific writer, Hughes published two volumes of poetry during the era: The Weary Blues (1926) and Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927). His poems such as “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” show racial pride and perseverance; poems such as “Prayer Meeting” provide glimpses into everyday Harlem life.

Novels

In addition to Fauset and Johnson, many other novelists published during the Harlem Renaissance, such as Nella Larsen, who wrote Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929), and White, author of The Fire in the Flint (1924) and Flight (1926). Fauset, Johnson, Larsen, and White’s works often represent the African American middle class. Fauset and Larsen’s novels also reveal the lives of African American women. Other novels satirize whites’ and blacks’ obsession with color. Illustrating this category are Wallace Thurman’s The Blacker the Berry(1929) and George S. Schuyler’s Black No More: Being an Account of the Strange and Wonderful Workings of Science in the Land of the Free (1931).

In addition to satire, there are realistic novels of place. Examples include Cullen’s One Way to Heaven (1932), Hurston’s Jonah’s Gourd Vine (1934), Thurman’s Infants of the Spring (1932), and Jean Toomer’s Cane (1923). African Americans in foreign locales are represented by Du Bois’ Dark Princess (1928), McKay’s Banjo: A Story Without a Plot (1929) and Banana Bottom (1933). The coming-of-age novel is represented by Hughes’ Not Without Laughter (1930), Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Wright’sNative Son (1939). Rudolph Fisher’s The Conjure-Man Dies: A Mystery Tale of Dark Harlem (1932) is the first African American detective novel. In addition to poetry and novels, writers of the Harlem Renaissance created short stories, essays, biographies, and autobiographies. The Harlem Renaissance lives on in its writings.

Bibliography

Andrews, William L., ed. Classic Fiction of the Harlem Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Introduces seven of the era’s most famous authors.

Huggins, Nathan Irvin. Harlem Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. A pioneering historical study of the era.

Huggins, Nathan Irvin, ed. Voices from the Harlem Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Anthologizes 120 works according to theme.

Kellner, Bruce, ed. The Harlem Renaissance: A Historical Dictionary for the Era. New York: Methuen, 1987. Presents information in an easy-to-find format.

Knopf, Marcy, ed. The Sleeper Wakes: Harlem Renaissance Stories by Women. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1993. Acknowledges the important but traditionally overlooked contributions of Harlem Renaissance women writers.

Lewis, David Levering, ed. The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. New York: Viking, 1994. Anthologizes forty-five writers of the era and is a valuable resource for any student of the Harlem Renaissance.

Lewis, David Levering, ed. When Harlem Was in Vogue. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Is regarded as a classic study of the Harlem Renaissance; this historical overview is an excellent introduction to the era.

Locke, Alain, ed. The New Negro. New York: Atheneum, 1968. A reprint of the Harlem Renaissance’s first anthology.

Schwarz, A. B. Christa. Gay Voices of the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003. Schwarz examines the work of four leading writers from the Harlem Renaissance—Countée Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Richard Bruce Nugent—and their sexually nonconformist or gay literary voices.

Turner, Darwin T. In a Minor Chord: Three Afro-American Writers and Their Search for Identity. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1971. Discusses Toomer, Cullen, and Hurston.

Watson, Steven. The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of African American Culture, 1920-1930. New York: Pantheon Books, 1995. Provides a historical and entertaining introduction to the era.