Jean Toomer's Cane was published in 1923, a miscellany composed of fifteen poems, seven stories, six prose vignettes and a play that all focus on Negro life during the 1920's. The book was focused on the primitive modern sense of what it meant to be an African-American during the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance spanned the 1920's and 'it was the period when the Negro was in vogue'.1 New York had become 'the capital of the black world'2 and Harlem was the site of black economic power and consciousness. What is now considered to be the Harlem Renaissance was termed the Negro Renaissance in its own time. The movement pushed for black self-assertion against white privilege and supremacy, advocated the term 'Negro' as a word of pride. Taking strides forward to move away from it's connotations of the late 19th and early 20th century, that black people were uneducated and almost sub-human. .
The New Negro movement was a bi-product of the Harlem Renaissance, it was the result of the overlapping social and intellectual circles that were present in New York during the 1920's. However, these intersecting ideas and groups meant that The New Negro movement was not a cohesive one, but was loosely bound together with hopes for racial assertion and self-definition. Toomer wrote most of Cane during the summer of 1921, by Christmas the first draft of all sketches including Kabnis were complete. During the early 1920's when Toomer was writing there was much emphasis on becoming a 'New Negro', forging a new identity for ones self through the mediums of literature, art and music. Due to Cane's eclectic mixing of poetry and prose it was considered a New Negro text and is still considered a 'masterpiece of the Harlem Renaissance'.3 Toomer did not want to be associated with the Harlem Renaissance or to be solely identified as a Negro writer, as he believed that 'there [was] a new race in America.
Jean Toomer (1894-1967) "I am of no particular race. I am of the human race, a man at large in the human world, preparing a new race."(Wagner) These are the famous words of Jean Toomer, a writer and philosopher. ... (Smith) Finally in December 1922, Toomer completed Cane, and Toomer asked Waldo Frank to introduce it for him. ... (Scruggs) Jean Toomer was one of the best writers of his time. ...
Jean Toomer's Cane is a representation of the times in which Schuyler and Hughes debated. Cane attempts to inspire blacks to embrace their race and reveals its parallels to Hughes" argument that race has significance. ... Toomer hoped Cane would strengthen the notion of how truly unique and special black society was. ... Toomer and Hughes note the significance of race in music. ... Looking at Toomer's Cane in terms of this debate, Hughes" argument that race is significant is supported. ...
They took the pain and suffering of a whole race and turned it into art (King). ... The painters of the time tried to capture the pain and suffering of the African-American race in their work. ... Jean Toomer's father left his wife and son shortly after his birth. ... Eventually he went by the name we know him by today, Jean Toomer. ... After he graduated high school, Jean Toomer began traveling. ...
African American writer Jean Toomer inspired many later Harlem Renaissance writers with his passionate and realistic portrayal of black life in the novel Cane (1923). ... As a result, Toomer long struggled with the issue of race, both personally and professionally. As a man who could successfully "pass" for white, Toomer was a reluctant spokesperson for race conscious artists who were interested in celebrating "blackness." Instead, Toomer envisioned an American identity that would transcend race. Nonetheless, concerns with racial division inform his writing, often in a very specific manner ...
The Harlem Renaissance, as the name given to this whole bunch of artistic and literary revivals, is believed to have begun in 1923 with Jean Toomer's novel Cane. Besides Toomer, some of the important writers of the time can be listed as Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Claude McKay. ... It is a perfect poem about the race-relations and settled prejudice in the society, especially the last stanza is very much effective in the message it tries to give: "I saw the whole of Baltimore Of all the things that happened there That's all that I remember." ...
Brown, Jean Toomer, Zora Neal Hurston, Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Maya Angelou and the list goes on to include newer African American authors and scholars such as Cornell West, Toni Morrison and Nikki Giovanni. ... An author and lecturer, Frances Harper was born of free parents in 1825 and began to write poetry about race and antislavery in 1854. ... A poet, novelist, play writer, and artist, Jean Toomer was one of many talented African Americans during the 20th century before the Harlem Renaissance. Best known for his book Cane, which included poetry, sketches, short ...
Also commonly seen is the alienation from the white race, the use of folk material or oral tradition, and the problems with writing for a white audience (Reuben 2). ... Du Bois, Jessie Fauset, Rudolph Fisher, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen, Alain Locke, Claude McKay, Wallace Thurman, Jean Toomer, Carl Van Vechten, and Walter White. ... Cane (1923), by Jean Toomer, was an experimental novel that combined poetry and prose in documenting the life of American blacks in the rural South and urban North. ... Marcus Garvey emphasized to American blacks to be proud of their race an...
World View on Race and Democracy, a Study Guide in Human Group Relations. ... Harris and Molesworth focus on Locke's philosophy: advocacy of pluralism; insistence of on relativism concerning race relations; emphasis on social democracy; concepts of "value", and aesthetic ideas. Critic Steven Chabot agrees that the biography show that Locke's influence as a leader came from his constant contemplation of the issues surrounding race, cultural and aesthetic pluralism, and the philosophy of value. ... Many others are equally familiar with Locke's reputation as a race leade...
World View on Race and Democracy, a Study Guide in Human Group Relations. ... Harris and Molesworth focus on Locke's philosophy: advocacy of pluralism; insistence of on relativism concerning race relations; emphasis on social democracy; concepts of "value", and aesthetic ideas. Critic Steven Chabot agrees that the biography show that Locke's influence as a leader came from his constant contemplation of the issues surrounding race, cultural and aesthetic pluralism, and the philosophy of value. ... Many others are equally familiar with Locke's reputation as a race leade...
