Women of the Harlem Renaissance (Women of Letters) - Hardcover

Wall, Cheryl

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0253329086 ISBN 13: 9780253329080

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 1995

Synopsis

Features the lives and work of women in the Harlem Renaissance - Jessie Redmon Fauset, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, and others - situated in the traditions of African-American and American writing.

About this title

From the Back Cover

The national, chronological, racial, ethnic, economic, and social circumstances of these women vary widely: the contours of the female literary community are complex, its highways and byways labyrinthine and often unfamiliar. Thus each volume in this series will pay close attention to what is in effect a single neighborhood. At the same time, precisely because the subject matter is complex, no volume in the series is intended as an encyclopedic guide to women writers in a particular place or period.

Reviews

For her multidimensional study, Wall chooses to use the most expansive definition of the Harlem Renaissance in order to include writers whose work was published during the Depression and women like Ann Spencer, who lived outside of Harlem. But while Wall discusses the significant contributions of Spencer, Marita Bonner and Georgia Douglas Johnson, her focus is firmly on three central figures: Jessie Redmon Fauset, Nella Larsen and Zora Neale Hurston. Wall offers a wealth of information and insight on their work, lives and interaction with other writers. The three women are quite different. The vivacious Fauset (Plum Bun) was a middle-class, well-traveled northerner who, as literary editor of W.E.B. Du Bois's The Crisis from 1919 to 1926, came to know many of the great literary figures of the time. Larsen had a more tumultuous background and never fit in anywhere until her move to Harlem. It was then that she wrote her acclaimed Quicksand and Passing, the novels that made her part of the inner circle?before she disappeared almost as quickly as she appeared. The most celebrated woman writer of the period, Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God and Mules & Men) was also one of the era's few true daughters of the rural South and spent most of the years of the Harlem Renaissance on the road. Wall offers strong critiques of these women's work, uncovering certain similarities, including, most importantly, the travel motif as not only a reflection of the mass migrations of the day but also a larger dislocation.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Traditional studies of the Harlem Renaissance often neglect women writers. Moving women from the margin to the center, Wall (English, Rutgers Univ.) examines the lives and work of novelists Jessie Redmon Fauset, Zora Neale Hurston, and Nella Larsen and such poets as Georgia Douglas Johnson and Annie Scales Spencer. By connecting the women to one another, to the cultural movement in which they worked, and to other early 20th-century women writers, Wall deftly defines their place in American literature. Her biographical and literary analysis surpasses others by following up on diverse careers that often ended far past the end of the movement. Highly recommended for collections on African Americans, women, and 20th-century America.?Brenda M. Brock, SUNY at Buffalo
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0253329086
• ISBN 13: 9780253329080
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 246