Product Description
Challenging conventional constructions of the Harlem Renaissance and American modernism, Daylanne English links writers from both movements to debates about eugenics in the Progressive Era. She argues that, in the 1920s, the form and content of writings by figures as disparate as W. E. B. Du Bois, T. S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, and Nella Larsen were shaped by anxieties regarding immigration, migration, and intraracial breeding.

English's interdisciplinary approach brings together the work of those canonical writers with relatively neglected literary, social scientific, and visual texts. She examines antilynching plays by Angelina Weld Grimk© as well as the provocative writings of white female eugenics field workers. English also analyzes The Crisis magazine as a family album filtering uplift through eugenics by means of photographic documentation of an ever-improving black race.

English suggests that current scholarship often misreads early-twentieth-century visual, literary, and political culture by applying contemporary social and moral standards to the past. Du Bois, she argues, was actually more of a eugenicist than Eliot. Through such reconfiguration of the modern period, English creates an allegory for the American present: because eugenics was, in its time, widely accepted as a reasonable, progressive ideology, we need to consider the long-term implications of contemporary genetic engineering, fertility enhancement and control, and legislation promoting or discouraging family growth. ... Read more

Product Description
They set a record in World War I with the longest frontline service of any American regiment, without a soldier captured or a foot of ground lost-but the 369th was forbidden to fight for the U.S. army. Handed over to France, this all-black unit became a band of heroes, such as private Henry Johnson, who singlehandedly knocked out a platoon of twenty-eight German troops. The feat won him France's prestigious Croix de Guerre-yet Johnson is today still denied America's Medal of Honor. The saga of soldiers who struggled to reach the front lines was shadowed by racism, debates among black leaders over whether African Americans should withhold support for the war until steps toward equality were made, inadequate provisions forcing them to drill in the streets of Harlem and in a local dance hall, and finally being forbidden from serving under U.S. command. Their service and return, complete with a spectacular parade up Fifth Avenue, helped fuel the Harlem Renaissance and paved the way for the 369th's contributions in World War II, in Iraq during the first Gulf War, and other black military heroes who have followed in their footsteps. Eight pages of photographs are featured in this important work. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Slapdash treatment of an important subject
While Bill Harris should be thanked for writing about this topic, the treatment he affords it is weak at best.The whole story of the 15th NYNG (later 369th Infantry) as told here is riddled with factual errors, ranging from the date of the creation of the regiment confused with its actual implementation, to having Colonel Hayward associated with it 3 years before he actually assumed command.References to other events are also wrong, most noticeably, the Houston Riot of 1917 which happened in the 24th Infantry, not the 8th Illinois.Harris wrongly refers to the 69th New York as a division named the "Rainbow Division" (the 69th was a regiment in the 42nd Division which was, and still is the "Rainbow Division")and also states that the 15th NY (369th) was not allowed to participate in the parade with the 69th.Many other white New York regiments (7th, 12th etc.) did not parade with the 69 as they were not chosen to represent New York in the 42nd Division, and
Harris is wrong when he refers to the 369th as being formerly the 15th New York. The 369th was not designated as such until after they were in France, at the time of the parade they were still the 15th New York. They were never a part of the 42nd division, although they had hoped to be included in it. Perhaps one of the most egregious errors is the continuation of the myth that Henry Johnson was buried in an unmarked potters field in Albany when in fact he is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.Conspicious by their abscence are any reference to primary source documents which exist both in this country and France, nor are any of the standard published works on African Americans in The First World War cited.Little's "From Harlem to the Rhine" is used, as is Scott's "History of the Negro in the World War", but no other works on this period appear in the bibliography, and the former was written over 30 years ago and the latter at the conclusion of the war. There has been much scholarly work done since then. His overview of the African American experience in the US military is equally thin and again his bibliography omits many scholarly studies of this subject, focusing instead on unit histories or personal narratives.
This book takes an important theme and does a poorly researched rush job to make it to press in time for the holidays. For a factual book on this subject one should still refer to Arthur Barbeau's "The Unknown Soldiers" or Bernard Nalty's "Strength for the Fight".The experience of African Americans in World War 1 and in the US Military is a crucial theme in American history, to which this book does not do justice.We can only hope that someone else produces a beter work on it in the near future than Bill Harris has done with this. ... Read more

Product Description

The creative team behind the smash hit Crowns:Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats returns with a glorious tour of the spirit of Harlem—a collection of fifty stunning black-and-white photographs and unforgettable interviews that capture the heart and soul of one of the most famous and vibrant neighborhoods in the world.
Harlem, long known as the epicenter of black cultural life in America, is undergoing a radical change. An unprecedented infusion of hundreds of millions of dollars in development capital is revitalizing the community and transforming a cityscape marred by decades of poverty. In a striking show of exuberance, upscale shops arematerializing in once-abandoned buildings, new homes are popping up in vacant lots, and sheets of glass twinkle in place of grim, boarded-up windows. The economic renewal has lured a host of new people to the neighborhood—doctors, lawyers, investment bankers,and even a former president. But it has also posed a threat to many residents who have lived through the worst of times and now fear that they will lose their homes and livelihoods as boom times sweep in.
Spirit of Harlem documents this extraordinary period of transition through the words and faces of newcomers and longtime residents alike. There are reminiscences of Harlem during the 1920s through the 1960s, stories of friends and families gathering at churches, in local shops, and on the streets, and thoughts on what the future holds for the neighborhood.
Millions of tourists visit Harlem each year, and many people in the United States can trace their roots to this legendary area or have read about its remarkable history and impact on American life and culture. In more than fifty stunning portraits and essays, Spirit of Harlem brings all its splendor, rancor, drama, and glamour vividly to life.

The voices of Spirit of Harlem:

“The minute you step out your door, everything in Harlem is in your face. There is a beauty and a poetry in all that . . .” —Lana Turner, real estate broker


“Bubba and me thought Harlem was Heaven, all the lights and the sights. I asked my aunt, ‘Where do all the white people live?’” —Rev. Betty Neal

“When I came up from the subway, I said, ‘Oh man, I'm lost!’ But then I saw the Apollo and it blew me away. I said, ‘Wow, this is it! I’m in Harlem!’ I had never been to Harlem before, but I just knew I belonged here.” —Bryan Collier, author and artist

Customer Reviews (4)

Spirited Account of a Historical Neighborhood
SPIRIT OF HARLEM:A Portrait of America's Most Exciting Neighborhood
by Craig Marberry and Michael Cunningham is a beautiful book filled with two page pictorial accounts of famous and not so famous people and places that make up Harlem USA.Places such as the famed Abyssinian Baptist Church, the Harlem Hospital, to the Harlem YMCA, the Dance Theatre of Harlem to Hats by Bunn. It also serves as a historical account because the author and photographer delve into the heart and soul of Harlem's past that made it the elite capital it was for African-Americans during the Harlem Renaissance.SPIRIT OF HARLEM opens with a foreword by Gordon Parks, which sets the tone for this collection, and is followed by the author and photographer's insight into their first glance of Harlem.This collection of narrations also provides a sequencing of accounts by current and former residents of all ages and nationalities with candid black and white photographs of the subjects highlighted.Most photographs include a building, which serves as a backdrop or a tangible item that is featured in the story that follows. The first person accounts are encouraging, heartfelt and humorous as well as dismal and oppressive.

SPIRIT OF HARLEM showcases traditional and non-traditional professions such as a former activist, an art dealer, artists, a bookstore owner, a chess player, Chief Executive Officers, a choreographer, a nun, an opera singer, a real estate broker and a social worker. Other professions include a fencer, funeral parlor owners, an Asian gospel singer, a Caucasian graphic designer, hair braiders, historians, a journalist, a literary agent, a law firm partner, medical doctors, ministers and church deacon, a photographer, a restaurant owner and spa owners, along with a myriad of other professions.

One of my favorite narrations is by Isabel Powell, the first wife of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.The former Mrs. Powell tells a humorous short story of their meeting, her occupation, his father's rejection of her and finally, her feelings upon their divorce.Another is Kevin Taylor, a producer for Black Entertainment Television and his recollection of the Harlem Shake, a gyrating dance that took the teens of Harlem and the country by storm.Finally, Ron Clark, a Caucasian, southern, male teacher who moved from the South to teach in Harlem; his tactics for winning parental involvement and the buy-in from his students.

Some people have a distorted perception of this island within an island but SPIRIT OF HARLEM validates the fact that historically and currently there is much to see, do and learn about Harlem.SPIRIT OF HARLEM is a treasured collectible that provides a journey into a rich past.

Reviewed by Dawn R. Reeves
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

definitely worth buying
This book has fascinating stories of ordinary and extraodinary people.For each person interviewed, there is a picture or 2 and a story told by that individual. The writer did an excellent job at capturing these stories in first person...i felt like I was actually sitting in front of these people and listening to them tell me about a moving incident, their childhood, reflections on life... Some of these stories made me laugh and some made me cry.It was a neat experience to "meet" all these interesting people.The photography is beautiful

Nothing but the Best
As a Native New Yorker, It does me proud to see fellow New Yorkers talk about Harlem, past,present and future. I have enjoyed this book as well as Crowns(I own them both),and it is such a treasure to see Harlem at its finest. This book is highly recommended.

Excellent, informative, and moving
Spirit of Harlem is a wonderful treasure of a book. Looking at the photographs and reading the interviews is like going on a journey. Your eyes take in every color and every shape; your ears take in every sound, every smell, and you can hear the people's voices, some ordinary, some famous, yet they all ring loud and rise from these pages.

I've never read anything like this book, one that forces you to laugh and cry at the same time. One that opens up your eyes to a world that you didn't really existed. It's a flavor-filled coffee table book bursting with wondrous history. And it truly embodies the human spirit as the voices of people from different races and cultures all share their common bond of living and/or working in Harlem.

The Spirit of Harlem is just that - a spirit of discovery that races through from the pages and causes you to learn things you've never heard before. Even if you've haven't been to Harlem, the book makes you proud and happy to know that such a place exists. This important and heartwarming book is highly recommended. ... Read more

Product Description
The Harlem Renaissance is the best known and most widely studied cultural movement in African American history. Now, in Harlem Renaissance Lives, esteemed scholars Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham have selected 300 key biographical entries culled from the eight-volume African American National Biography, providing an authoritative who's who of this seminal period. Here readers will find engagingly written and authoritative articles on notable African Americans who made significant contributions to literature, drama, music, visual art, or dance, including such central figures as poet Langston Hughes, novelist Zora Neale Hurston, aviator Bessie Coleman, blues singer Ma Rainey, artist Romare Bearden, dancer Josephine Baker, jazzman Louis Armstrong, and the intellectual giant W. E. B. Du Bois.Also included are biographies of people like the Scottsboro Boys, who were not active within the movement but who nonetheless profoundly affected the artistic and political statements that came from Harlem Renaissance figures. The volume will also feature a preface by the editors, an introductory essay by historian Cary D. Wintz, and 75 illustrations. ... Read more

Product Description
Using a sociological, historical, and psychological approach, this work offers a multidisciplinary perspective and fills the research gap about the Harlem community and urban black life during the Jazz Age and the Great Depression. This book proposes that Harlem was an intricate domain of competing ideologies, needs, and interests wherein there were many cross-cutting forms of power and exclusion. Such competition placed the community at the intersection of complicated power relations in which local, citywide and nationwide power, policies, and commitments overlapped. Changing economic circumstances that characterized the interwar period combined with the shifting municipal politics including community reliance on government support and the political strength of medical societies that left Harlem residents politically and economically circumscribed in their efforts to build and fortify institutions focused on maintaining community wellness.In this larger circumscription, citywide, statewide, and nationwide politics made health for black people a politicized affair during the early twentieth century. This work further reveals that in conjunction with the political economy of race, health was a major issue of debate that residents of Harlem could enter into despite systematic efforts by politicians and medical professionals to simultaneously limit residents' political agency and regulate health services and institutions in New York City. Such fissures and cracks within the political structure allowed for community engagement and empowerment. This study provides for a more comprehensive understanding of the connections among black morbidity, mortality, health-care delivery, and black political engagement in Harlem, New York, and aims to expand the historical understanding of race and politics, as well as the lived experiences of black people in New York City in the early twentieth century. As a scholarly work in the field of African American urban history, Building a Healthy Black Harlem is accessible to upper-division undergraduate and graduate students in courses in post-1865 United States history, African American history, and urban history. It also possesses the insight and rigor for specialists in the field of New York City history and African American urban history. ... Read more

Product Description
Josephine Baker -- Walter White -- Zora Neale Hurston --A'Lelia Walker -- James Weldon Johnson -- Ethel Waters -- LouisArmstrong -- Bessie Smith -- Alberta Hunter -- Jessie Fauset -- NellaLarsen -- Florence Mills -- Duke Ellington -- Bill "Bojangles"Robinson -- Carl Van Vechten -- Langston Hughes -- Dorothy West

"The Power of Pride features seventeen of the most prominent men andwomen of the New Negro Renaissance. Alternately irreverent, racy, andpainfully honest, they were unique: risk-takers in dangerous times,sophisticated salonires in an age of bourgeois provincialism, andexperimenters who briefly managed to transcend race by immersingthemselves in it." --From the Introduction

The Harlem Renaissance was an electrifying period during which hugenumbers of African Americans threw off the shackles of discrimination,exploitation, and poverty in the South and moved north. Heady with thefeeling of liberation and the discovery of other like-minded folk,artists, writers, painters, and dancers engaged in bursts of furiouscreativity. From Josephine Baker, taking Paris by storm with hersensual performances and ravishing costumes, to Duke Ellington,revolutionizing the way people thought about rhythm and melody, theseartists were the preeminent stylemakers of the era. The Power of Prideis a visually spirited and intimate book full of photographs, letters,playbills, and drawings that capture the gaiety and excitement of thetime.

Moving from the brownstones of Striver's Row in Harlem to the NegroAppreciation salons in Paris, the book focuses on seventeenRenaissance figures who exemplify the themes of race, fortitude,talent, and style, and whose streng!th of will and ability created amodel for all those with dreams and aspirations emerging in theAfrican-American community. The work of each shared a common thread,their intent, as writer Ralph Ellison has articulated it, "to arousethe troubling suspicion that whatever else the true American is, he isalso somehow black." With a foreword by Juan Williams--author of Eyeson the Prize and Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary-- andstunning photographs throughout, The Power of Pride serves as a vividtestament to the artistic and social contributions of the HarlemRenaissance to the history of America.Amazon.com Review
The Harlem Renaissance, the legendary explosion of African American artistic excellence that stretched from 1921 to 1929, was arguably the most concentrated and influential cultural era in the history of the United States. The Power of Pride, a collection of letters, program notes, and gorgeous photographs compiled by University of Delaware Professor Carole Marks and photographic curator Diana Edkins, is a lovely literary and visual snapshot of this unique period in Afro-American history. The authors take us on an imaginary "A" train back to the early 20th century to celebrate the regal style of Duke Ellington and the pixyish sensuality of Josephine Baker, along with the down-home vibes of Louis Armstrong and the enigma of "mystery woman" Nella Larson. They detail Zora Neale Hurston's anthropological and ancestral words of wisdom, along with Dorothy West's early writings. Marks and Edkins also explore other black enclaves in Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Paris. What makes this collection special is the air of dignity and drive displayed by the African American aristocracy of the time. As Professor Marks writes, "they were the strivers--the dicty--who could not be categorized." --Eugene Holley Jr. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Engaging and stimulating
This book is fantastic and a source of pride! I studied this period in undergrad. and I love to read anything I can find on the Harlem Renaissance. The book is beautifully done, the photos are great and thechoices are interesting.Wondered why the authors placed Bill Robinson inthe DC section, but the bios are concise and complete. A great book foryoung people as well as students of the period.

Fantastic
As a student of the printed word, I've always been fascinated by the Harlem Renaissance, or the "RenGen" (Renaissance Generation). This book is wonderful to me because it offers information and faces tomatch the personalities with which I'd found myself identifying withthroughout most of my life.It is very uplifting and encouraging to readabout such a group of classy, glamorous, educated, eloquent, literate,ambitious, and talented young individuals.Even though a few of theirideals were somewhat disturbing (mainly the whole "paper-bagtest" mentality), this book was still thoroughly refreshing.With itswonderful photographs and biographical information, it is a plethora ofinformation in sepia.Today's writers should emulate the literary (prosaicand poetic) elegance and grace of Johnson, Fauset, Larsen, Hurston, Hughes,and others, instead of seemingly automatically gravitating towards awritten genre that seems to stress nothing but profanity and over-(overt)sexuality in the African American community.How I wish those days ofclass could come back to our literary community!Perhaps one day it will.

To know the history of American culture, read this!
Marks' and Edkins' book is an elegant portrayal of the lives of those who created the Harlem Renaissance. Beautifully illustrated with historical photographs--most rarely seen, this book should be read by anyone wantingto know about the evolution of American culture. The authors' narrativereveals the strength and creativity of these African American women and menwhose energy and talent has given the nation some of its richest culturalforms. They show how they grappled with questions of racial identity in ahighly segregated society and how their relationships with each otherfostered one of the most important cultural movements in the nation. Anyone wanting to know more about American history , its culturalinstitutions, and the legacy of racial prejudice should read this book andshow it to their children. ... Read more

Product Description
The Harlem Renaissance was the most significant event in African American intellectual and cultural life in the twentieth century. Its most obvious manifestation was in a self-conscious literary movement, but it touched almost every component of African American creative culture in the period from World War I through the Great Depression: music, the visual arts, theater, and literature. It also affected politics, social development, and almost every phase of the African American experience in the 1920s and 1930s.

This anthology concentrates on the literary aspects of the Harlem Renaissance, though it does include several examples of the visual arts associated with the movement. The literary texts are arranged more or less chronologically; for the most part shorter pieces have been selected that could be presented in their entirety. There are some excerpts from longer works. All of the major authors are represented as well as some less well known. This anthology also includes selections that help frame the history of the movement, several essays on the Harlem Renaissance, as well as some critism contemporary to the writing.

Concluding with a bibliography, this volume serves as a brief introduction to the Harlem Renaissance, its writers, and the rich body of literature they produced. ... Read more

Product Description
The gifted and rebellious writer Claude McKay grew up in the British West Indies and then moved to the United States. As he traveled from Jamaica to Harlem and then to Europe and Africa, he embraced various causes and political ideologies that made their way into his writings. Brought up as a colonial in the BritishWest Indies, he found racial oppression as an immigrant in the United States. His struggle for self-definition and self-determination was manifest in his writings and laid the foundation for the Harlem Renaissance and negritude movements. African American scholarship in the United States tends to focus on McKay’s American productions, such as his poetry and novels like Home to Harlem, while critics in the Caribbean focus on his works there: novels like Banana Bottom and dialect poetry. This study has undertaken to explore comprehensively the life and works of Claude McKay, framed within colonial and cross-cultural experiences. While dealing with pertinent issues like identity, race, exile, ethnicity, and sexuality, the work examines all the facets of this influential 20th century author, a man trying to solve the problem of his own identity in a world determined to marginalize him. ... Read more

Product Description
Looking at the communities of Central and West Harlem in New York City, this study explores the locus, form and significance of socioeconomic differentiation for African American professional-managerial workers. It begins by considering centuries of New York City history and the structural elements of class inequality to present readers with the larger context of contemporary events. The primary objective of this study is to examine the everyday lives of black professionals in Harlem and determine what bearing income-generating activities have on ideology, consumption patterns and lifestyle, among other factors. ... Read more

Product Description
This is a collection of lost stories about the Harlem Renaissance. They are the voices of ordinary people who came to Harlem to start new lives. They created a new culture, the first generation of African-Americans. ... Read more

Product Description
Beginning with a subtle and persuasive analysis of the cultural context, Farebrother examines collage in modernist and Harlem Renaissance figurative art and unearths the collage sensibility attendant in Franz Boas' anthropology. This strategy makes explicit the formal choices of Harlem Renaissance writers by examining them in light of African American vernacular culture and early twentieth-century discourses of anthropology, cultural nationalism and international modernism. At the same time, attention to the politics of form in such texts as "Toomer's Cane", "Locke's The New Negro" and selected works by Hurston reveals that the production of analogies, juxtapositions, frictions and distinctions on the page has aesthetic, historical and political implications. Why did these African American writers adopt collage form during the Harlem Renaissance? What did it allow them to articulate? These are among the questions Farebrother poses as she strives for a middle ground between critics who view the Harlem Renaissance as a distinctive, and necessarily subversive, kind of modernism and those who foreground the cooperative nature of interracial creative work during the period.A key feature of her project is her exploration of neglected connections between Euro-American modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, a journey she negotiates while never losing sight of the particularity of African American experience. Ambitious and wide-ranging, Rachel Farebrother's book offers us a fresh lens through which to view this crucial moment in American culture. ... Read more

Product Description
A finalist for the 1972 National Book Award, hailed by The New York Times Book Review as "brilliant" and "provocative," Nathan Huggins' Harlem Renaissance was a milestone in the study of African-American life and culture. Now this classic history is being reissued, with a new foreword by acclaimed biographer Arnold Rampersad.

As Rampersad notes, "Harlem Renaissance remains an indispensable guide to the facts and features, the puzzles and mysteries, of one of the most provocative episodes in African-American and American history." Indeed, Huggins offers a brilliant account of the creative explosion in Harlem during these pivotal years. Blending the fields of history, literature, music, psychology, and folklore, he illuminates the thought and writing of such key figures as Alain Locke, James Weldon Johnson, and W.E.B. DuBois and provides sharp-eyed analyses of the poetry of Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, and Langston Hughes. But the main objective for Huggins, throughout the book, is always to achieve a better understanding of America as a whole. As Huggins himself noted, he didn't want Harlem in the 1920s to be the focus of the book so much as a lens through which readers might see how this one moment in time sheds light on the American character and culture, not just in Harlem but across the nation. He strives throughout to link the work of poets and novelists not only to artists working in other genres and media but also to economic, historical, and cultural forces in the culture at large.

This superb reissue of Harlem Renaissance brings to a new generation of readers one of the great works in African-American history and indeed a landmark work in the field of American Studies. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

When Blacks began the slow walk to their last mile of Freedom
With great relish, professor Huggins has penned a gem. He has captured the essence of the spirit and the times of the gilded but still turbulent age of the 1920s. And although they were still far from achieving their full freedom, it was the first time since the "redemption" in the aftermath of the Civil War that the Negro actually could focus on what he would do with his freedom.

And what he did even in his thoroughly segregated circumstances was to explode into a self-conscious flowering of his own cultural instincts. The Harlem renaissance was not just a profound statement of blacks about their arrival on the American cultural scene, a self-conscious tossing away as it were of the final shackles of slavery, but also and more importantly it was the first incubation period of black liberation and cultural and political sophistication.

More than any other period, it was during the Harlem renaissance in which the black community came of age culturally and came together as one united front against racism using cultural tools and its intellectual power and substance on par with its white counterparts. Against all odds, they created a cultural oasis right in the middle of a sea of white hatred and racial recrimination. This flowering was something that was not only unexpected and shocking to the sensibilities of most whites, but shocking also to many blacks outside of New York, around the countryside. And although the flowering occurred across the board, its clearest expression took place in literature, art and music, which itself later was to become America's transformative art form.

Here for the first time we hear all of the clear voices of strong confident accomplished black intellectuals forging a path right down the middle of main street racist America and making their mark have weight equal to their numbers in the scheme of American society.The Harlem Renaissance was inspired by the black soldiers who had returned from WW-I. Having fought for freedom in a world war half way around the globe, they now came home committed to do the same on their own soil. As was to prove to be the case time and time again, theirs was not an easy task, but they did so without looking back and continued until the great depression kick the bottom out of the economy. Until then, they had put a lie to the mean-spirited myth that blacks were uncultured to the point of being less than human.

How they did it is what this book is all about. Why it cannot happen again and why blacks last mile of freedom has stalled in the present period of "so called full equality" is a question this book quietly begs and thus leaves unanswered. Nevertheless, this is still a clear five star effort.

a primary text of 1920s Harlem
In this year 2005, the 1920s may be utterly distant. Yet during that decade, there was a cultural flowering in the American Negro community. Centred at Harlem. Huggins takes us to that place and time. The narrative is enhanced by one key trait. This book was first published in 1971. The research that went into it was done in the late 60s. Several influential persons of 20s Harlem were still around and the text gives their direct experiences, from interviews with the author.

In this way, Huggins provides a primary text for future students and historians. But given the 30 years that have elapsed since publication, that is who current readers are.

The book shows how even with the severe strictures on Negroes throughout much of the US, a spirited culture could still arise and thrive. ... Read more

Product Description
When Houston A. Baker, Jr., one of Americas foremost literary critics, first published Afro-American Poetics in 1988, it was hailed as a major revisionist history of both African American culture and criticism. Now available in paperback, this ambitious and enlightening book juxtaposes two of the most fertile periods of African American culture, the 1920s and the 1960s; it includes essays on Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, and Hoyt Fuller. This is also Bakers most personal book, an intellectual autobiography tracing his own beginnings as a scholar of Victorian literature, his second birth as he began teaching African American literature, and his visions and revisions of a black aesthetic.From reviews of the hardcover editionBaker explores in fine and splendid detail the dialectic between self and other, rhetoric and representation, high theory and the Black vernacular, to chart the evolution of Afro-American literary criticism since 1970.Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard UniversityBakers is a fascinating portrait of the literary critic as blues artist, reconstructing the products of two amazingly fruitful decades of engagement with Afro-American expressive culture in illuminating autobiographical examinations of his ownand indeed, Afro-American criticismsmomentous changes over that period of time.Michael Awkward, University of MichiganReaders who do not know much about black American literature would learn a great deal from Afro-American Poetics; those who do would be further enlightened.Peter Nazareth, World Literature TodayFor this student of black literature, the final impact of Afro-American Poetics is overwhelming.We now have the beginnings of a superstructure upon which to gauge individual pieces of black literature.Eugene Kraft, Callaloo ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description

"[This] critical edition of a selection of Richard B. Moore's essays closes one more gap in the astonishing history of twentieth-century Afro-American nationalism." -- Journal of American History

"This first collection of Moore's writings... [is] a welcome and important contribution to scholarship concerned with the political and intellectual history of African peoples in general and of African peoples in the Americas, in particular.... an inspiration to those who follow after to study and emulate his life and achievement." -- Journal of American Ethnic History

Product Description
From the music of Louis Armstrong to the portraits by Beauford Delaney, the writings of Langston Hughes to the debut of the musical Show Boat, the Harlem Renaissance is one of the most significant developments in African-American history in the twentieth century. The Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, in two-volumes and over 635 entries, is the first comprehensive compilation of information on all aspects of this creative, dynamic period.

For a full list of entries, contributors, and more, visit the Encyclopedi a of Harlem Renaissance website. ... Read more

Product Description

This volume provides new historical and literary insights into the Harlem Renaissance, returning attention to it not only as a broad expression of artistic work but also as a movement that found catharsis in art and hope in resistance.

By examining such major figures of the era as Jessie Fauset, Paul Robeson, and Zora Neale Hurston, the contributors reframe our understanding of the interplay of art, politics, culture, and society in 1920s Harlem. The fourteen essays explore the meaning and power of Harlem theater, literature, and art during the period; probe how understanding of racial, provincial, and gender identities originated and evolved; and reexamine the sociopolitical contexts of this extraordinary black creative class. Delving into these topics anew, The Harlem Renaissance Revisited reconsiders the national and international connections of the movement and how it challenged clichéd interpretations of sexuality, gender, race, and class. The contributors show how those who played an integral role in shattering stereotypes about black creativity pointed the way toward real freedom in the United States, in turn sowing some of the seeds of the Black Power movement.

A fascinating chapter in the history of the African American experience and New York City, the cultural flowering of the Harlem Renaissance reverberates today. This thought-provoking combination of social history and intellectual art criticism opens this powerful moment in history to renewed and dynamic interpretation and sharper discussion.

Customer Reviews (6)

Boxer Jack Johnson "represented black power in its fullest form: intelligent, ... jet black and able to crush white hegemony"
Open at random any one of the 14 essays in THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE REVISITED: POLITICS, ARTS, AND LETTERS. Read that essay and see you don't then hunger for 13 more. They are all good, all provocative, all about "The New Negro," the Harlem Renaissance (1919 - 1935). They showcase black men and women who made both previously "supreme" whites and downtrodden blacks take a second, more admiring look at black men and women -- their art, their language, their corporate culture, their physical attributes and their politics. Connecticut Professor of HistoryJeffrey O. G. Ogbar, has carefully selected 14 different writers, each with much worth reading and pondering.

I took my own advice offered above and opened five of the 14 essays at random. I chose one to review a bit more fully and four others for you to sip a drop or two from.

(I.) Chapter Eleven: "Jack Johnson, Paul Robeson, and the Hypermasculine African American Uebermensch" by Paula Marie Seniors. Of the 21 pages of this essay, fully five-plus pages are footnotes. All 14 essays are scholarly. This one has the largest academic addenda. The essay is very, very good and convincing. But it might be nearly a page shorter if the author, a young prize-winning scholar teaching at Virginia Tech, had not exuberantly repeated a score of times "Hypermasculine African American Uebermensch."

Her prototypical black heroes of masculinity are the heavyweight boxer John Arthur "Jack" Johnson (1878 - 1946) and Renaissance man and all around athlete Paul Robeson (1898 - 1976).

Johnson, "the Galveston Giant," was flamboyant. He had three white wives, he rubbed his blackness in white men's faces. When Johnson won the heavy weight boxing title in 1908, no less than Jack London called for a "great white hope" to emerge and restore the honor of white males. One did arise. Former undefeated world champ James J. Jeffries came out of retirement and was worn down to a TKO. Boxer Jack Johnson "represented black power in its fullest form: intelligent, strong, muscled, impenetrable, jet black and able to crush white hegemony uncompromisingly."


* * *

Who has not heard of Paul Robeson. As singer of "Old Man River," sure. But as polyglot linguist? As All American footballer? As general Renaissance man? He was big. He was black. He was cosmopolitan. He was fearless of fascists American and elsewhere. And he showed white people everywhere what talents they could expect coming generations of black males to reveal.

(II) Snatches from four other essays selected at random:

-- (A) Chapter Ten. Wallace Thurman's 1929 novel THE BLACKER THE BERRY immortalized the folk saying, "The blacker the berry, / the sweeter the juice." Its heroine is Emma Lou Morgan. She did not mind being black, but Emma Lou, mistakenly, saw herself as TOO black, and that ruined her life till she came to terms with it.

--(B) "So the Girl Marries" is Chapter Four's theme: the 1928 Harlem high society wedding between soon to be revealed bisexual poet Countee Cullen and Nina Yolande Du Bois, daughter of the legendary black genius Dr W. E. B. Du Bois. The marriage lasted only a few months. But it inspired a stage play, YOLANDE, KNOCK ME A KISS. You can't understand the Harlem Renaissance without grasping the good and bad sides of Mr and Mrs Countee Cullen.

-- (C) Chapter Eight is all about the American Protestant "song sermon." When enslaved and transported African minstrels were converted to Christianity, they started retelling Bible stories in a Mandingo way: with acting, singing, dancing and active audience/congregation action and reaction. Their lineal discendants, the Spirit-filled black Protestant preachers, constitute perhaps black America's greatest contribution to culture.

-- (D) Chapter Three is about the spirituality behind the music -- all the music, secular and religious -- of Duke Ellington. Duke took the jazz that made him and his band famous in Harlem's Cotton Club into the cathedral. "Ellington took the Cotton Club concepts of elaborate ideas and precision pacing into church." His three sacred concerts (1965, 1968, 1973) were sublime show business, with "dancing, instrumental and vocal solos, luscious ensemble work (and) choirs."

Essayist Frank A. Salamone does not mention another link to a key figure of the Harlem Renaissance (1919 - 1935), boxer Jack Johnson. A nightclub that Johnson opened in Harlem in 1920 was sold in 1923 and renamed The Cotton Club. What goes around, comes around.

This is an almost perfect book. A great editor. Pretty fair writing. Important history of black Americans who made a difference. Much of the scholarship is derivative, but the originals selected are cited and the selecting was mighty fine.

-OOO-

A book of 14 essays on an important period in the "arts", but more of a textbook than a casual read.
This book gathers 14 essays on the various portions of the Harlem Renaissance and cover music (Duke Ellington; Paul Robeson), literature, and other arts. Though the essays are brief each comes with nearly a page of footnotes making it more of a textbook than a mass-market non-fiction history of a culture. I can see this being used in an African American studies program in high school or at a university.THERE it might be used as an introduction.

For the casual reader - especially one who doesn't want to switch back and forth between the main text and the numbered footnotes - there are better books out there on the subject.

Steve Ramm
"Anything Phonographic"

lamb stew and curried goat
under the name of ogbar as rubric, jeffrey o. g. ogbar shepards a herd of fourteen academics from different countries.there are several goats in his fold, nibbling away in the green pastures of the harlem renaissance, finding fault, instead of celebration, with the designated appellation.randy and rapacious within their enclosure they question and trod new paths to consider.

some of the fourteen offerings:

the harlem renaissance as an abstraction is jacob s. dorman's thesis in his Back to Harlem, focusing on the harlem renaissance as home of the hardpressed worker instead of the celebrated lovable gangsters and entertainers:
`Examining everyday life and work patterns in 1920s Harlem illustrates that the abstracted Harlem of the literary imagination is an inadequate replacement for the knowledge of Harlem to be gleaned through social history.Harlem's black workers inspired and helped create the abstraction of Harlem ...'

in Jack Johnson, Paul Robeson, and the Hypermasculine African American Ubermensch, paula marie seniors in her highly accessible essay discusses the black `renaissance' man.

at work in the field of the lord, is mckinley melton with his paper Speak It into Existence on james weldon johnson's Trombones of God, and his neat reverent declaration of the african american preacher and the sermon as song grounded in hebrew scripture and folk song.

shawn anthony christian critiques in detail the film Brother to Brother, in his essay Between Black Gay Men.readers of his essay should see the film before reading the essay; otherwise, any pleasure in the unfolding story will be ruined.

maxim matusevich explores the sway of stalin's soviet union on african americans of the era in "Harlem Globetrotters".jacqueline c. jones contributes "So the Girl Marries" on the marriage between yolande dubois, daughter of w.e.b. dubois, and the poet, countee cullen.the haitian novelist and literary critic, myriam j. a. chancy, writes of claude mckay's extensive travels and of zora neale hurston's time in haiti, in Border Crossings.

that ogbar's flock has waxed fat on their eating makes for much food for thought, while leaving plenty for the curious general reader to savor.

Scholarly Reconsideration of an Important Period
Title The Harlem Renaissance Revisited: Politics, Arts, and Letters
Author Ogbar G., Jeffrey O.
Rating ****
Tags


This book is a collection of fourteen scholarly essays on the Harlem Renaissance, that flowering of black culture in the U.S. in the 1920s and 30s. It centered on Harlem, and is most known for its impact on the arts, but it involved intellectual pursuits across the spectrum. Editor Ogden divides the essays into five parts: Aesthetics and the New Negro; Class and Place in Harlem; Literary Icons Reconsidered; Gender Constructions; and Politics and the New Negro. The New Negro was a concept that was an integral part of the Harlem Renaissance, and also the title of one of the era's definitive books, an anthology of black writing edited by Alain Locke.

As usual in an anthology, the essays vary in quality. Some tend to suffer from an overabundance of academic terminology. Some are less interesting than others. Among the stand outs are "No Negro Renaissance: Hubert H. Harrison and the Role of the New Negro Literary Critic" , which discusses Harrison's critique of the Harlem Renaissance in which he argued that calling the period a Renaissance diminished great Negro artists of prior years; and "Harlem Globe-Trotters: Black Sojourners in Stalin's Soviet Union" about the African Americans who traveled to the Soviet Union and found an acceptance they could not find in other countries, certainly not in the United States.

Editor Ogden is to be commended for book's production values. Each essay has footnotes following the essay as well as a bibliography. Brief biographies of the contributors follow the essays, as does the most outstanding feature, an index of the whole work. For example, if you look up "Du Bois, W. E. B." you get every page he was referenced in all the essays.

It is a well-done work, overall, though probably is not the book to read for an introduction to the Harlem Renaissance. It is a valuable work for scholars of the era, bringing in fresh ideas about an important period in history.


Publication The Johns Hopkins University Press (2010), Paperback, 272 pages
Publication date 2010
ISBN 0801894611 / 9780801894619

Great supplemental reading for Harlem Renaissance fans
I am thrilled to have come across this book. I am working on a PhD in American literature with a focus in African American literature and Queer Theory. This book covers the intersections of race and sexuality within the Harlem Renaissance and offers some refreshing new insights for thought and discussion concerning the "New Negro" and queer politics.
I haven't finished the book yet, but the few essays I have read have me very excited to keep picking up the book until it is finished.
If you are interested in artists/writers such as Hurston, Hughes, Cullen, Fauset etc., this book is a must. Very pleased. ... Read more