Known as the Harlem Renaissance, or New Negro Movement, the early to mid 1900s coincided with a previously unprecedented amount of creativity in the African American literary community. These writers all wanted to lift up and portray their heritage- either African American or Afro-Caribbean, and use their works to expand the horizons of African American expression. The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement as much as an artistic one; it drew aspiring artists and authors to New York. Famous among these were Alain Locke, Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay and Jean Toomer; all of whom had a hand in crafting the movement. These authors and movement leaders all helped to overthrow the image of the Old Negro as an inferior who did not control production or expression to a New Negro, “self-assertive, racially conscious, articulate, and, for the most part, in charge of what they produced” (Harlem Literature). This renovation of thought was encouraged by literature such as Alain Locke’s The New Negro, published in 1925.
As the movement gained power and prestige, young authors were able to publish a good amount of work while exploring and creating new literary forms. Jean Toomer was one of these. He drew upon a “rich folk tradition [including] oral culture, folktales, black dialect, jazz and blues composition” (Harlem Literature). As a part of the Harlem Renaissance, he was not constrained to one literary or expressive form- he was able to write with his own expression- as he perceived the world.
Jean Toomer’s position in the New Negro movement was unique as a result of his racial ancestry. He was of mixed race, allowing him to flow freely between cultures- he “lived equally amid the two race groups” (Norton 556), eventually drifting closer to his Negro roots for better self expression. As a child, he had alternately attended all-white and all-black schools; and even as he wrote Cane, his most famous work, he had to weigh his heritage. For Toomer, the greatest concern was how to fit in to a society and define himself creatively as a person of mixed race.
His poems, especially the early ones, show this clash of cultures he understood so well. And yet, despite his misfit-ness, he was able to establish himself as an integral part of the New Negro movement. He uses his poems to delve into racial tensions, lynchings, the disappearances of rural life, nature-symbolism, and slavery. He tried to live as all of himself, an American who let all parts of himself exist complementarily. This attitude led to internal conflict that showed through his poems, but also offered him a unique perspective and place in the world of expanding and changing New Negro expression.
Works Cited
Harlem Literature: http://www.jcu.edu/harlem/Literature/Page_1.htm
Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry
As the movement gained power and prestige, young authors were able to publish a good amount of work while exploring and creating new literary forms. Jean Toomer was one of these. He drew upon a “rich folk tradition [including] oral culture, folktales, black dialect, jazz and blues composition” (Harlem Literature). As a part of the Harlem Renaissance, he was not constrained to one literary or expressive form- he was able to write with his own expression- as he perceived the world.
Jean Toomer’s position in the New Negro movement was unique as a result of his racial ancestry. He was of mixed race, allowing him to flow freely between cultures- he “lived equally amid the two race groups” (Norton 556), eventually drifting closer to his Negro roots for better self expression. As a child, he had alternately attended all-white and all-black schools; and even as he wrote Cane, his most famous work, he had to weigh his heritage. For Toomer, the greatest concern was how to fit in to a society and define himself creatively as a person of mixed race.
His poems, especially the early ones, show this clash of cultures he understood so well. And yet, despite his misfit-ness, he was able to establish himself as an integral part of the New Negro movement. He uses his poems to delve into racial tensions, lynchings, the disappearances of rural life, nature-symbolism, and slavery. He tried to live as all of himself, an American who let all parts of himself exist complementarily. This attitude led to internal conflict that showed through his poems, but also offered him a unique perspective and place in the world of expanding and changing New Negro expression.
Works Cited
Harlem Literature: http://www.jcu.edu/harlem/Literature/Page_1.htm
Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry
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