Harlem Renaissance
1. Harlem Renaissance (HR) is the name given to the period from the end of World War I and through the middle of the 1930s Depression, during which a group of talented African-American writers produced a sizable body of literature in the four prominent genres of poetry, fiction, drama, and essay.
2. The notion of "twoness" , a divided awareness of one's identity, was introduced by W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).and the author of the influential book The Souls of Black Folks (1903): "One ever feels his two-ness - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled stirrings: two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."
3. Common themes: alienation, marginality, the use of folk material, the use of the blues tradition, the problems of writing for an elite audience.
4. HR was more than just a literary movement: it included racial consciousness, "the back to Africa" movement led by Marcus Garvey, racial integration, the explosion of music particularly jazz, spirituals and blues, painting, dramatic revues, and others.
Originally called the New Negro Movement, the Harlem Renaissance was a literary and intellectual flowering that fostered a new black cultural identity in the 1920s and 1930s. Critic and teacher Alain Locke described it as a "spiritual coming of age" in which the black community was able to seize upon its "first chances for group expression and self determination."
With racism still rampant and economic opportunities scarce, creative expression was one of the few avenues available to African Americans in the early twentieth century. Chiefly literary—the birth of jazz is generally considered a separate movement—the Harlem Renaissance, according to Locke, transformed "social disillusionment to race pride."
Sterling Allen Brown
Sterling Allen Brown (May 1, 1901 - January 13, 1989) was an African American teacher, and writer on folklore of poetry and of literary criticism. He was mainly interested in black culture from the Southern United States.
Early life
He was born on the campus of Howard University in Washington D.C., where his father (a former slave and prominent minister) was a professor. He was educated at Dunbar High School and graduated as the top student for which he received a scholarship to attend Williams College. Graduating from Williams Phi Betta Kappa in 1922, he continued his studies at Harvard University, receiving an MA a year later.
The same year, he became an English teacher at Virginia Seminary and College, a position he would hold for the next three years. In 1927 he married Daisy Turnbull.
Academic Career
Brown began his teaching career at a number of universities, including Lincoln University and Fisk University, before returning to Howard in 1929 as a teacher where he remained for forty years. During his time there he taught and wrote about African-American literature and folklore and was a pioneer in the appreciation of this genre
Brown was known for introducing his students to concepts then popular in Jazz, which-along with blues, spirituals, and other forms of music with an extensive history among black Americans-formed an integral component of his poetry.
In addition to his career at Howard University Brown also taught at Vassar College, New York University (NYU) and Atlanta University during semesters when he was not teaching at Howard.
Some of his notable students include Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), Kwame Nkrumah, Ossie Davis and LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka).
In 1969 he retired from his faculty position at Harvard and returned to his professional career as a poet.
Literary Career
In 1932 he published his first book of poetry, Southern Road. It was a collection of poetry with rural themes and treated the simple lives of poor, black, country folk with poignancy and dignity. It also used authentic dialect and structures. Despite the success of this book he struggled to find a publisher for the followup, No Hiding Place (book).
His poetic work was influenced in content, form and cadence by the African American music including work songs, blues and jazz. Like Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes and other black writers of the period, his work often dealt with race and class in the United States. Brown is usually considered part of the Harlem Renaissance artistic tradition, although he spent the majority of his life in the Brookland neighborhood of Northeast Washington, D.C., where he was the city's poet laureate until his death from leukemia at the age of 88.
Nella Larsen
Nella Larsen (April 13, 1891 - March 30, 1964) was a mixed-race novelist of the Harlem Renaissance who wrote two novels and a few short stories. Though her literary output was scant, what she wrote was of extraordinary quality, earning her recognition by her contemporaries and by present day critics.
Biography
Larsen went by various names throughout her life; born in Chicago on April 13, 1891 as Nellie Walker, the daughter of the Danish immigrant domestic worker Marie Hanson and Peter Walker, a West Indian man of color from Saint Croix who soon disappeared from her life,[1][2]. Taking the surname of her Scandinavian stepfather Peter Larsen,[1] she also at times went by Nellye Larson, Nellie Larsen and, finally, Nella Larsen[3] as well as by her married name Nella Larsen Imes.[4]
Larsen lived several years as a child with her mother's relations in Denmark, and in 1907-08, she briefly attended Fisk University, in Nashville, Tennessee, a historically Black University, which at that time had an entirely Black student body. George Hutchinson speculates that she was expelled for some violation of Fisk's very strict dress or conduct codes; she then spent four years in Denmark, before returning to the U.S. [5]
In 191, Larsen enrolled in the all-Black nursing school at New York City's Lincoln Hospital. Upon graduating in 1915, she went South to work at the Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama where she became head nurse at a hospital and training school. While in Tuskegee, she came in contact with Booker T. Washington's model of education and became disillusioned with it. (Washington died shortly after Larsen arrived in Tuskeegee.) Working conditions for nurses were poor—their duties included doing hospital laundry—and Larsen lasted only until 1916, at which time she returned to New York to work again as a nurse. However, after working as a nurse through the Spanish flu pandemic, she left nursing and became a librarian.[4]
In 1919, she married Elmer Samuel Imes, a prominent physicist, the second African American to receive a Ph.D in physics. They moved to Harlem, where Larsen took a job at the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library (NYPL).[4] In the year after her marriage, she began to write, publishing her first pieces in 1920.
Certified in 1923 by the NYPL's library school, she transferred to a children's librarian's position in Manhattan's Lower East Side. In 1926, having made friends with important figures in the Negro Awakening that became the Harlem Renaissance, Larsen gave up her work as a librarian and began to work as a writer active in the literary community.[4] In 1928, she published Quicksand (ISBN 0-14-118127-3), a largely autobiographical novel, which received significant critical acclaim, if not great financial success.
In 1929, she published Passing (ISBN 0-14-243727-1), her second novel, which was also successful.
In 1930, Larsen published "Sanctuary" [1], a short story for which she was accused of plagiarism; also at this time her marriage was failing.
"Sanctuary" resembled Sheila Kaye-Smith's short story "Mrs. Adis", first published in the UK in 1919. Kaye-Smith was an English writer, mainly on rural themes, and very popular in the US. "Sanctuary"'s basic plot, and a little of the descriptions and dialogue are virtually identical. Compared to Kaye-Smith's tale, "Sanctuary" is longer, better written and more explicitly political, specifically around issues of race, rather than class as in "Mrs Adis". Larsen reworked and updated the tale into a modern American black context. Much later Sheila Kaye-Smith herself wrote in "All the Books of My Life" (Cassell, London, 1956) that she had in fact based "Mrs Adis" on an old story by St Francis de Sales. It is unknown whether she ever knew of the Larsen controversy.
Despite the accusations of plagiarism, which ultimately turned out to be false, Larsen received a Guggenheim Fellowship and traveled to Europe for several years, spending time in Mallorca and Paris, and working on a novel about a love triangle; the three protagonists were all white; the book was never published. [6]
She returned to New York in 1933 after her divorce was complete. She lived on alimony until her ex-husband's death in 1942; she was not writing (and never would again), was apparently depressed, and may have been using drugs. After her ex-husband's death she returned to nursing and disappeared from the literary circles through which she had previously travelled. She lived on the Lower East Side, and did not venture to Harlem.[6] Many of her old acquaintances speculated incorrectly that she, like some of her characters, had crossed the color line and disappeared.
Identity
As not mentioned above, Larsen was of biracial parentage and what would have been considered at the time "low birth". She obtained a good education (though not a college degree); she married into Harlem's black professional class (but never quite felt at home in it); she knew all the figures of the Harlem Renaissance, but was about a decade older than Langston Hughes' generation; she was, according to Darryl Pinckney, more comfortable in the interracial bohemia of Greenwich Village than among the "Talented Tenth". [4]
Quicksand
Nella Larsen's first novel tells the story of Helga Crane, a fictional character clearly based on Larsen herself. Crane is the daughter of a Danish mother and a black father, who goes to various places and communities in search of somewhere she feels her home. Her travels bring her in contact with many of the communities Larsen herself knew. She begins in "Naxos", a Southern Negro school based on Tuskegee University, where she finds herself unsatisfied with the complacency of those around her, mentioning a sermon by a white preacher telling them that their segregation of themselves into black schools was good sense, and that to strive for equality would be them becoming avaricious. Chicago, where her white relatives shun her; Harlem, where she finds a refined but often hypocritical black middle class obsessed with the "race problem"; Copenhagen, where she is treated as a highly desirable racial exotic; and finally the poor deep South, where she is disillusioned by people's blind adherence to religion. In each of these searches, Helga Crane fails to find fulfillment.
The novel also tells the tale of Helga's search for a marriage partner: it opens with her engaged to a prestigious Southern Negro man she does not really love, sees her turn down the proposal of a famous European artist, and ends with her seducing and marrying a Southern preacher. The novel's close is deeply pessimistic as Helga Crane sees what began as sexual fulfillment turn into an endless chain of pregnancies and suffering.
Passing
Larsen's second novel tells the story of two light skinned women: Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry. Clare Kendry is of mixed heritage, while Irene Redfield is fully African American but both are light enough to pass. Clare fully commits herself to passing and marries John Bellew, a white man who knows nothing of her heritage and affectionately and jokingly calls her "Nig" for her "tan" complexion. Irene lives in Harlem, commits herself to racial uplift, and marries a black doctor. The novel centers on the meeting of the two childhood friends later in life, and the unfolding of events as each woman is fascinated and seduced by the other's daring lifestyle. The novel traces a tragic path as Irene finds out about the affair between Clare and her husband and Clare's race is revealed to John Bellew. The novel ends with Clare's sudden death by "falling" out of a window.
The end of the novel is famous for its ambiguity, which leaves open the possibility that Irene has pushed Clare out the window or the possibility that Clare has killed herself.
Many see this novel as an example of the plot of the tragic mulatto, a common figure in early African American literature. Others suggest that the novel complicates that plot by introducing the dual figures of Irene and Clare, who in many ways mirror and complicate each other. The novel also suggests erotic undertones in the two women's relationship, and some read the novel as one of repressed lesbian desire.
Recently, Passing has received a great deal of attention because of its close attention to racial and sexual ambiguities and to liminal spaces. It has now achieved canonical status in many American universities.
Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 - January 28, 1960) was an American folklorist and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance, best known for the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Childhood
Hurston was "purposefully inconsistent in the birth dates she dispensed during her lifetime, most of which were fictitious."[1] For a long time, scholars believed that Hurston was born and raised in Eatonville, Florida, with a birthdate in 1901. In the 1990s, it came to light that she was actually born in Notasulga, Alabama in 1891 (see for example Lowe, Jump at the Sun, 1994); she moved to Eatonville at a young age, and spent her childhood there.
Hurston also lived in Fort Pierce, Florida and attended Lincoln Park Academy. Hurston discussed her Eatonville childhood in the 1928 essay, "How It Feels To Be Colored Me". At age 13, her mother died and later that year, her father sent her to a private school in Jacksonville.
College and anthropology
She began her undergraduate studies at Howard University but left after a few years, unable to support herself. She was later offered a scholarship to Barnard College where she received her B.A. in anthropology in 1927. While at Barnard, she conducted ethnographic research under her advisor, the noted anthropologist Franz Boas of Columbia University. She also worked with Ruth Benedict as well as fellow anthropology student Margaret Mead.[2] She is also a member of Zeta Phi Beta Inc.
Career
Hurston applied her ethnographic training to document African American folklore in her critically acclaimed book Mules and Men (1935) along with fiction (Their Eyes Were Watching God) and dance, assembling and leading a finger popping group which performed works such as the 1932 Broadway performance The Great Day. In addition, Hurston was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to travel to Haiti and conduct research in 1937. She was one of the first academics to conduct an ethnographic study of the Vodun, also a subject of study for fellow dancer/anthropologist Katherine Dunham who was then at the University of Chicago.[3]
In 1954 Hurston (who had fallen upon hard times) was assigned to cover the murder trial of Ruby McCollum for the Pittsburgh Courier with journalist/author and civil rights advocate William Bradford Huie.
Death
Hurston died penniless in obscurity and was buried in an unmarked grave in Fort Pierce, Florida. African-American novelist Alice Walker and literary scholar Charlotte Hunt found and marked the grave in 1973, sparking a Hurston renaissance. Hurston's house in Fort Pierce is a National Historic Landmark.
Fort Pierce celebrates Hurston annually through various events such as Hattitudes, birthday parties and a several-day festival at the end of April, Zora Fest.
Politics
During her prime, Hurston was a supporter of the UNIA and Marcus Garvey, casting herself in fierce opposition to communism as professed by many of her colleagues in the Harlem Renaissance such as Langston Hughes, who wrote several poems of effusive praise for the Soviet Union. Hurston thus became by far the leading black figure on the libertarian Old Right, and in 1952 she actively promoted the presidential candidacy of Robert Taft.
Hurston's detachment from the wider civil rights movement was demonstrated by her opposition to the Supreme Court ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education case of 1954. She voiced this opposition in a letter, Court Order Can't Make the Races Mix, which was published in the Orlando Sentinel in August 1955. This letter caused a furor and proved to be Hurston's last public intervention.
Public obscurity and acclaim
Hurston's work slid into obscurity for decades, for a number of reasons, cultural and political.
Many readers objected to the representation of African American dialect in Hurston's novels. Hurston's stylistic choices in terms of dialogue were influenced by her academic experiences. Thinking like a folklorist, Hurston strove to represent speech patterns of the period which she documented through ethnographic research. For example (Amy from the opening of Jonah's Gourd Vine):
"Dat's a big ole resurrection lie, Ned. Uh slew-foot, drag-leg lie at dat, and Ah dare yuh tuh hit me too. You know Ahm uh fightin' dawg and mah hide is worth money. Hit me if you dare! Ah'll wash yo' tub uh 'gator guts and dat quick."
Some critics during her time felt that Hurston's decision to render language in this way caricatured black culture. In more recent times, however, critics have praised Hurston for her artful capture of the actual spoken idiom of the day.
The conservative politics of Hurston's work also hindered the public's reception of her books. During the 1930s and 1940s when her work was published, the pre-eminent African American author was Richard Wright. Unlike Hurston, Wright wrote in explicitly political terms, as someone who had become disenchanted with communism, using the struggle of black Americans for respect and economic advancement as both the setting and the motivation for his work. Other popular African American authors of the time, such as Ralph Ellison, were also aligned with Wright's vision of the struggle of African Americans. Hurston's work, which did not engage these explicit leftist political issues, simply did not fit in smoothly with this struggle.
With the publication of the ambitious novel Seraph on the Suwanee in 1948, Hurston burst through the tight bounds of contemporary black writing in yet another seemingly apolitical way. This is a tale of poor whites struggling in rural Florida's citrus industry. Black characters recede to the background. Neither the black intelligentsia nor the white mainstream of the late 1940s could accept the notion of a black writer speaking through white characters. Panned across the board, Seraph ended up being Hurston's last major literary effort as she retreated to small-town Florida for the rest of her life. The text stands out, as she remarked herself, as a testimony to her own self-definition as a regional as much as a black writer.
In academia, anthropologists often disdained Hurston's works as fiction, and thus unworthy of inclusion on anthropological reading lists. Feminist critics of academia have observed that a number of novels and non-fiction works of confessional literature written by women with anthropological training that draw upon their observations and experiences were sidelined in this fashion. Hurston's work was, in this respect, treated in the same manner as some books by Elsie Clews Parsons, Ella Deloria, and Laura Bohannon, among others. At the same time, when well known male anthropologists began to experiment with literary form and style in ethnography, they were often hailed for their work. Many critics therefore perceive the lack of academic acclaim for Hurston's work to indicate a form of institutional sexism. Hurston's books have since been discussed and celebrated not only as African American literature, but as feminist literature as well.