Harlem Renaissance: Five Novels of the 1920s

by Rafia Zafar (Editor)

HARLEM Five Novels of the 1920s leads off with Jean Toomer's Cane (1923), a unique fusion of fiction, poetry, and drama rooted in Toomer's experiences as a teacher in Georgia. Toomer's masterpiece was followed within a few years by a cluster of novels exploring black experience and the dilemmas of black identity in a variety of modes and from different angles. Claude McKay's Home to Harlem (1928), whose freewheeling, impressionistic, bawdy kaleidoscope of Jazz Age nightlife made it a best seller, traces the picaresque adventures of Jake, a World War I veteran, within and beyond Harlem. Nella Larsen's Quicksand (1928), the poignant, nuanced psychological portrait of a woman caught between the two worlds of her mixed Scandinavian and African American heritage; Jessie Redmon Fauset's Plum Bun (1928), the richly detailed account of a young art student's struggles to advance her career in a society full of obstacles both overt and insidiously concealed; and Wallace Thurman's The Blacker the Berry (1929), with its anguished, provocative look at prejudice and exclusion as it tells of a new arrival in Harlem searching for love, each in its distinct way testifies to the enduring power of the Harlem ferment.

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.