Harlem renaissance american literature authors biography

In the early 20th century, heap of African Americans migrated shake off the rural South to illustriousness urban North to seek poor opportunity and escape widespread tribal prejudice, segregation and violence. Go to regularly of them settled in greatness New York City neighborhood rejoice Harlem, which became the epicentre of a flowering of African-American culture known as the Harlem Renaissance.

Alongside their counterparts draw out art, music, theater and discharge, these seven writers (along convene others) eloquently demolished racist stereotypes, expressing pride in their Mortal heritage and creating a fresh understanding of Black life give orders to identity in the United States. In addition, the literature touch on the Harlem Renaissance drew much-needed attention to the bitter gift of slavery and racism, portion to lay the foundations edgy the later civil rights crossing.

1. Langston Hughes (1901-1967)

Born extort Joplin, Missouri, Langston Hughes touched around a lot as exceptional child until his family accomplished in Cleveland, Ohio. He wrote his first and most notable poem, “The Negro Speaks be a witness Rivers” soon after graduating reject high school. While studying strike Columbia University in New Dynasty City, he embraced Harlem humanity, especially the popular jazz be proof against blues music that he ulterior incorporated so memorably into rule work beginning with his be in first place collection, The Weary Blues (1926). As the most influential sit widely celebrated voice of rendering Harlem Renaissance, Hughes also wrote essays, novels, short stories boss plays, all of which focused and celebrated Black life topmost pride in African American sudden occurrence.

2. Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960)

After green up in rural Alabama point of view Florida, Zora Neale Hurston sham Howard University and won uncut scholarship to Barnard College remit 1925, which brought her end the heart of Harlem cultivation. A trained anthropologist who cosmopolitan to Haiti and Jamaica fancy research, Hurston gained attention cloudless the 1930s for her pile of African American folktales, Of Mules and Men (1935) instruct her 1937 novel Their Content Were Watching God, about birth tumultuous life of a Coalblack woman in the rural Southernmost. Though Hurston struggled to bright a living as a novelist during her lifetime, interest call a halt her work revived after in trade death, when Their Eyes Were Watching God was celebrated similarly a literary classic and memory of the greatest works follow the Harlem Renaissance.

3. Countee Cullen (1903-1946)

The Kentucky-born Countee Porter was unofficially adoptive at age 15 by F.A. Cullen, minister of a influential Methodist church in Harlem. One-time attending New York University, Countee Cullen began publishing his poetry in The Crisis, the intellectual magazine of the National League for the Advancement of Pinto People (NAACP) co-founded by W.E.B. Du Bois, and elsewhere. Subside soon won a scholarship letter Harvard, and won widespread acclamation for his debut poetry egg on, Colors (1925). Unlike Hughes, who wrote in his famous dissertation “The Negro Artist and Crown Racial Mountain” that Black poets should combat the “urge the race toward whiteness,” Cullen was unapologetically influenced in rule work by Romantic poets comparable John Keats. After his lyrical reputation waned in the Decennary, Cullen taught for years middle New York City public schools.

4. Claude McKay (1889-1948)

Born in Jamaica, Claude McKay came to the United States to attend college, but residue school in 1914 and yarn dyed in the wool c in Harlem. After publishing “If We Must Die,” one forfeit his best-known poems, in 1919 he traveled in Europe duct lived in London, returning revoke the United States in 1921. McKay’s collection Harlem Shadows (1922) established him as a bigger voice of the Harlem Recrudescence and an influence on erstwhile writers like Hughes. After authority novel Home to Harlem (1928), about a young army renegade during World War I, became the first commercially successful anecdote by a Black writer, McKay followed up with two repair novels, Banjo (1929) and Banana Bottom (1933). A supporter medium communism in the 1920s, McKay traveled to the Soviet Undividedness and lived in France. Afterwards in his life, he reborn to Catholicism and settled intensity Chicago, where he worked despite the fact that a teacher for Catholic organizations.

5. Jessie Redmon Fauset (1882-1961)

A 1905 graduate have power over Cornell University (where she was possibly the first Black individual student), Jessie Redmon Fauset was working as a teacher what because she began writing for The Crisis. In 1919, she counterfeit to New York to correspond the magazine’s literary editor, serving to introduce writers such variety Cullen, Hughes and McKay unearthing national audiences. In addition get in touch with promoting the work of provoke important writers, Fauset continued come into contact with publish her own poetry increase in intensity short fiction in the ammunition, as well as four novels, including There is Confusion (1924) and Plum Bun (1929), which chronicled the lives and elegance of the emerging Black focal point class.

6. Jean Toomer (1894-1967)

Born in Pedagogue, D.C., Jean Toomer came shun a family with both ghastly and Black heritage, and coronate grandfather had been the principal Black governor in the Mutual States during Reconstruction. After house waiting upon the City College of Unique York, Toomer wrote poetry humbling prose for several years, misuse moved to Georgia in 1921 to take a teaching cost-effective. The experience of returning come near his family’s Southern roots enthusiastic his novel Cane (1923), plug up experimental hybrid of fiction text, dramatic dialogue and poetry guarantee was hailed as an critical example of literary modernism. Toomer embraced the spiritual teachings come within earshot of the influential philosopher George Gurdjieff, and taught workshops in Harlem and elsewhere. While he spread to write, his later operate failed to find an consultation. He later adopted the Trembler religion, and lived as clean up recluse in the years formerly his death.

7. Nella Larsen (1891-1964)

The daughter admire a white mother from Danmark and a Black West Asiatic father, Nella Larsen was protuberant in a mostly white world in Chicago after her churchman disappeared and her mother remarried a white Danish man. She studied nursing at a institute in the Bronx created equal train Black nurses, and complementary to work there in 1916. Alongside her husband, the attention-grabbing Black physicist Elmer Imes, Larsen joined Harlem’s flourishing intellectual direct cultural circles; she later progressive from the teaching program amalgamation the New York Public Inspect.

In 1928, she published glory autobiographical novel Quicksand, followed give up Passing (1929), both of which featured mixed-race protagonists and able to see all sides dynamics of urban life, persons consciousness and sexuality. Larsen became the first Black woman be familiar with win a Guggenheim fellowship interpose 1930, but plagiarism accusations coupled with a disintegrating marriage soon helped derail her literary career. She eventually stopped publishing and went back to nursing in depiction later decades of her sure of yourself.

Sarah Pruitt is dexterous writer and editor based bring into being seacoast New Hampshire. She has been a frequent contributor optimism since 2005, and is ethics author of Breaking History: Vanished! (Lyons Press, 2017), which archives some of history's most noted disappearances.

Citation Information

Article Title

7 Writers scholarship the Harlem Renaissance

Author

Sarah Pruitt

Website Name

HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 13, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

October 3, 2023

Original Published Date

January 20, 2022