DESCRIPTION
It was W.E.B. DuBois who paved the way with his essays and his magazine
The Crisis, but the Harlem Renaissance was mostly a literary and
intellectual movement whose best known figures include Langston Hughes,
Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, and Jean Toomer.
Their work ranged from sonnets to modernist verse to jazz aesthetics
and folklore, and their mission was race propaganda and pure art.
Adding to their visibility were famous jazz musicians, producers of
all-black revues, and bootleggers.
Now available in paperback, this richly-illustrated book contains more
than 70 black-and-white photographs and drawings. Steven Watson clearly
traces the rise and flowering of this movement, evoking its main
figures as well as setting the scene—describing Harlem from the Cotton
Club to its literary salons, from its white patrons like Carl van
Vechten to its most famous entertainers such as Duke Ellington,
Josephine Baker, Ethel Waters, Alberta Hunter, Fats Waller, Bessie
Smith, and Louis Armstrong among many others. He depicts the social
life of working-class speakeasies, rent parties, gay and lesbian
nightlife, as well as the celebrated parties at the twin limestone
houses owned by hostess A'Lelia Walker. This is an important history of
one of America's most influential cultural phenomenons.
REVIEWS
From Publishers Weekly:
This engaging portrait of the "first self-conscious
black literary constellation in American history" mixes text with
photos and artwork; a side column on each page offers quotes, poetry
and pungent Harlem slang. Watson (Strange Bedfellows: The First
American Avant Garde) explains the forces behind the Renaissance, from
economic changes to the public advocacy of figures like W.E.B. Du Bois
and Alain Locke, then offers sketches of writers prominent in this
flowering. While the "New Negro" movement was initially aimed at
blacks, by the mid-1920s, "Harlem became a commodity as driven by its
audience as... by its participants. Harlemania set in." The role of
white patrons ("Negrotarians," to writer and anthropologist Zora Neale
Hurston) prompted black writers to debate what image they should
project. Watson also examines the Harlem music and club world,
including the thriving gay scene. Although the crash of 1929 devastated
Harlem and dispersed its luminaries, the author observes, the
Renaissance was also rent by internal contradictions over questions of
art, politics and racial unity. A most inviting blend of text and art.
This engaging portrait of the "first self-conscious black literary
constellation in American history" mixes text with photos and artwork;
a side column on each page offers quotes, poetry and pungent Harlem
slang. Watson (Strange Bedfellows: The First American Avant Garde)
explains the forces behind the Renaissance, from economic changes to
the public advocacy of figures like W.E.B. Du Bois and Alain Locke,
then offers sketches of writers prominent in this flowering. While the
"New Negro" movement was initially aimed at blacks, by the mid-1920s,
"Harlem became a commodity as driven by its audience as... by its
participants. Harlemania set in." The role of white patrons
("Negrotarians," to writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston)
prompted black writers to debate what image they should project. Watson
also examines the Harlem music and club world, including the thriving
gay scene. Although the crash of 1929 devastated Harlem and dispersed
its luminaries, the author observes, the Renaissance was also rent by
internal contradictions over questions of art, politics and racial
unity. A most inviting blend of text and art.
From The Washington Post:
"A grand tour of the time, place, and driving forces behind one of the
nation's greatest cultural flourishings."
click here for EXCERPTS >>
