On Being Me: Narratives & Poems by Women of the Harlem Renaissance: Women of the Harlem Renaissance

This anthology gathers remarkable short stories, personal essays, and poems by African American women who wrote during the Harlem Renaissance—offering candid, deeply felt reflections on identity, race, and womanhood. Through their own words, these writers explore what it meant to navigate the 1920s and 1930s as Black women, confronting stereotypes, asserting individuality, and finding community.

Approachable yet profound, this collection is ideal for classrooms, reading groups, and anyone interested in literature that shaped—and continues to shape—discussions of race, gender, and belonging. No matter what combination of experiences a reader brings to each piece in this volume, they are bound to be, on some level, enlightened.

Essays:

How it Feels to be Colored Me by Zora Neale Hurston / On Being Young—a Woman—and Colored by Marita O. Bonner / Some Notes on Color by Jessie Redmon Fauset / Black by Nellie R. Bright / The Pink Hat by Caroline Bond Day / I— by Brenda Ray Moryck / Why? by Lena Williams / The Task of Negro Womanhood by Elise Johnson McDougald.

Poems:
To a Dark Girl by Gwendolyn Bennett / Sybil Warns Her Sister by Anne Spencer / Goal by Mae V. Cowdery / Revelation by Blanche Taylor Dickinson / The Heart of a Woman by Georgia Douglas Johnson / The Black Finger by Angelina Weld Grimké / My Race by Helene Johnson.