... African roots of black American life. Also the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar and the fiction of Charles W. Chesnutt were the earliest works of African Americans to get national recognition. Jean Toomer's Cane documented life of blacks in the South, As Aaron Douglas once put it, "In few years it created flowering of black talent which has left an ineradicable cultural legacy ... ...

• Word Count: 1369
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... (Collier, 1985). Literature of the Harlem Renaissance In the early 1920s, three works signaled the new creative African American energy in literature. Claude McKay's volume of poetry, Harlem Shadow (1922), Jean Toomer's experimental novel combination of poetry and prose, Cane (1923), and Jessie Fauset's novel about a middleclass black woman, There Is Confusion (1924) were among the first books written by Blacks to ... ...

• Word Count: 2619
• Approx Pages: 10
• Grade Level: Undergraduate