Harlem Renaissance: Four Novels of the 1930s: Not Without Laughter / Black No More / The Conjure-Man Dies / Black Thunder

by Rafia Zafar (Editor)

The defiant energy of the New Negro Arts Movement that flourished between World War I and the Great Depression—more famously known as the Harlem Renaissance—was indelibly articulated by Langston Hughes: “We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. . . . We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.” Hughes was just one of the novelists who transformed American literature with sometimes startling explorations of fresh subject matter—including such controversial themes as “passing” and color prejudice within the black community—and a defiant insistence that African American writers must speak for themselves.

Four Novels of the 1930s captures the diversity of genre and tone nourished by the Harlem Renaissance. Together, these novels form a vibrant and contentious collective portrait of African American culture in a moment of tumultuous change and great promise.

Langston Hughes’s Not Without Laughter (1931)—the poet’s only novel, is an elegiac, elegantly realized coming-of-age tale suffused with childhood memories of Missouri and Kansas—follows a young man from his rural origins to the big city.

George S. Schuyler’s Black No More (1931), a satire founded on the science-fiction premise of a wonder drug permitting blacks to change their race, savagely caricatures public figures white and black alike in its raucous, carnivalesque send-up of American racial attitudes.

Considered the first detective story by an African American writer, Rudolph Fisher’s The Conjure-Man Dies (1932) is a mystery that comically mixes and reverses stereotypes, placing a Harvard-educated African “conjure-man” at the center of a phantasmagoric charade of deaths and disappearances.

Black Thunder (1936), Arna Bontemps’s stirring fictional recreation of Gabriel Prosser’s 1800 slave revolt, which, though unsuccessful, shook Jefferson’s Virginia to its core, marks a turn from aestheticism toward political militance in its exploration of African American history.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Literature, Anthologies

800 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2011

Reviews

[Gary Land · Rating 5 out of 5]

This volume includes Langston Hughes's Not Without Laughter, George S. Schuyler's, Black No More, Rudolph Fisher's The Conjure-Man Dies, and Arna Bontemps's Black Thunder. These are four very different books. Not Without Laughter was a very enjoyable, though at the same time disturbing, account of growing up Black in a small Kansas town. Black No More is a strange novel about a doctor who invents a way for Black people to become white and its tragic consquences. The Conjur-Man Dies is thought to be the first Black detective novel and probably can best be described as a police procedural. Finally Black Thunder is a fictional account of Gabriel's rebellion, the first organized Black attempt at freedom in North America. Of the four books I enjoyed Hughes and Bontemps the most but they all give a glimpse into the development of sophisticated Black literature in the twentieth century.

[Shelley Diamond · Rating 5 out of 5]

The four novels in this book are each excellent in their own right, and the range shown by the collection is truly amazing! It's a cultural landmark, especially from just one decade. Family drama, mystery, science fiction, and history.

I was not familiar with any of these novels before reading this book. The only author I knew here was Langston Hughes and only knew him as a poet; I came to this book because I was curious about this one novel he wrote.

I am so glad I read all four novels. This book is a masterpiece of humanity...

[Bill Arnold · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review refers to the novel: "Not Without Laughter" by Langston Hughes.
I found this novel to be stylish and sorrowful and Sandy will be a character that will always stay with me.
So stated as Langston Hughes only novel, I have now read it. I've enjoyed his short fiction and some of his elegant poetry and his writing prowess is abundantly present in this semi-autobiographical work.

[Lorraine McCleary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Four novellas from Black Harlem in the 30's which were really different. The first was an autobiography from Langston Hughes, the Conjure man a black murder mystery, Black no more a SF in which a scientist discovers a formula to make blacks white and unleashes a societal crisis when the black population crosses over, and the last a fictional account of Nat Turner's rebellion.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only made it through The Conjure-Man Dies by Rudolph Fisher for Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge, but such a good collection! Definitely will re-check again to read the rest.

[Christopher Sutch · Rating 5 out of 5]

See my reviews of the individual novels included in this collection.