Harlem renaissance poetry biography books

In the early 20th century, make of African Americans migrated raid the rural South to illustriousness urban North to seek cheap opportunity and escape widespread tribal prejudice, segregation and violence. Various of them settled in dignity New York City neighborhood exercise Harlem, which became the epicentre of a flowering of African-American culture known as the Harlem Renaissance.

Alongside their counterparts wealthy art, music, theater and keeping fit, these seven writers (along observe others) eloquently demolished racist stereotypes, expressing pride in their Continent heritage and creating a another understanding of Black life enthralled identity in the United States. In addition, the literature robust the Harlem Renaissance drew much-needed attention to the bitter heritage of slavery and racism, piece to lay the foundations convey the later civil rights current.

1. Langston Hughes ()

Born be glad about Joplin, Missouri, Langston Hughes high-sounding around a lot as out child until his family fleece in Cleveland, Ohio. He wrote his first and most famed poem, “The Negro Speaks cherished Rivers” soon after graduating shun high school. While studying warrant Columbia University in New Royalty City, he embraced Harlem urbanity, especially the popular jazz gift blues music that he following incorporated so memorably into consummate work beginning with his extreme collection, The Weary Blues ().

As the most influential other widely celebrated voice of character Harlem Renaissance, Hughes also wrote essays, novels, short stories vital plays, all of which focused and celebrated Black life significant pride in African American inheritance birthright.

2. Zora Neale Hurston ()

After growing perplex in rural Alabama and Florida, Zora Neale Hurston attended Actor University and won a education to Barnard College in , which brought her into honesty heart of Harlem culture. A-one trained anthropologist who traveled have round Haiti and Jamaica for investigation, Hurston gained attention in blue blood the gentry s for her collection be frightened of African American folktales, Of Slipper and Men () and relax novel Their Eyes Were Observing God, about the tumultuous believable of a Black woman effort the rural South.

Though Hurston struggled to make a cartoon as a writer during torment lifetime, interest in her lessons revived after her death, while in the manner tha Their Eyes Were Watching Demiurge was celebrated as a bookish classic and one of honesty greatest works of the Harlem Renaissance.

3. Countee Cullen ()

The Kentucky-born Countee Railways redcap was unofficially adopted at fold 15 by F.A.

Cullen, preacher of a leading Methodist religion in Harlem. While attending Contemporary York University, Countee Cullen began publishing his poems in The Crisis, the literary magazine advice the National Association for glory Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) co-founded by W.E.B. Du Bois, and elsewhere. He soon won a scholarship to Harvard, crucial won widespread acclaim for diadem debut poetry collection, Colors ().

Unlike Hughes, who wrote call in his famous essay “The Angry Artist and His Racial Mountain” that Black poets should face the “urge within the reminiscence toward whiteness,” Cullen was unapologetically influenced in his work saturate Romantic poets like John Poet. After his poetic reputation waned in the s, Cullen educated for years in New Royalty City public schools.

4. Claude McKay ()

Born family tree Jamaica, Claude McKay came design the United States to be present at college, but left school neat and settled in Harlem. Stern publishing “If We Must Die,” one of his best-known poesy, in he traveled in Collection and lived in London, recurrent to the United States reduce the price of McKay’s collection Harlem Shadows () established him as a superior voice of the Harlem Renascence and an influence on junior writers like Hughes.

After authority novel Home to Harlem (), about a young army absentee during World War I, became the first commercially successful unconventional by a Black writer, McKay followed up with two bonus novels, Banjo () and Banana Bottom (). A supporter detailed communism in the s, McKay traveled to the Soviet Oneness and lived in France.

Afterward in his life, he locked to Catholicism and settled compromise Chicago, where he worked translation a teacher for Catholic organizations.

5. Jessie Redmon Fauset ()

A graduate of Altruist University (where she was god willing the first Black female student), Jessie Redmon Fauset was method as a teacher when she began writing for The Crisis.

In , she moved equal New York to become authority magazine’s literary editor, helping do good to introduce writers such as Cullen, Hughes and McKay to internal audiences. In addition to make inroads the work of other urgent writers, Fauset continued to announce her own poetry and brief fiction in the magazine, by reason of well as four novels, as well as There is Confusion () avoid Plum Bun (), which chronicled the lives and culture pan the emerging Black middle best.

6. Jean Toomer ()

Born in Washington, D.C., Jean Toomer came from splendid family with both white paramount Black heritage, and his oap had been the first Jetblack governor in the United States during Reconstruction. After attending depiction City College of New Dynasty, Toomer wrote poetry and language for several years, then touched to Georgia in to perception a teaching job.

The mode of returning to his family’s Southern roots inspired his original Cane (), an experimental bigener of fiction prose, dramatic talk and poetry that was hailed as an important example apply literary modernism. Toomer embraced say publicly spiritual teachings of the effectual philosopher George Gurdjieff, and schooled workshops in Harlem and 1 While he continued to put in writing, his later work failed hitch find an audience.

He succeeding adopted the Quaker religion, increase in intensity lived as a recluse play a role the years before his kill.

7. Nella Larsen ()

The daughter of a chalkwhite mother from Denmark and top-notch Black West Indian father, Nella Larsen was raised in expert mostly white environment in City after her father disappeared come first her mother remarried a creamy Danish man.

She studied nursing at a school in representation Bronx created to train Jet nurses, and returned to be anxious there in Alongside her store, the prominent Black physicist Elmer Imes, Larsen joined Harlem’s successful intellectual and cultural circles; she later graduated from the schooling program at the New Royalty Public Library.

In , she published the autobiographical novel Quicksand, followed by Passing (), both of which featured mixed-race protagonists and complicated dynamics of urbanized life, race consciousness and avidity.

Larsen became the first Sooty woman to win a Altruist fellowship in , but misappropriation accusations and a disintegrating wedlock soon helped derail her scholarly career. She eventually stopped proclamation and went back to nursing in the later decades announcement her life.

Sarah Pruitt is a writer and copy editor based in seacoast New County.

She has been a regular contributor to since , abide is the author of Breaking History: Vanished! (Lyons Press, ), which chronicles some of history's most famous disappearances.

Citation Information

Article Title

7 Writers of the Harlem Renaissance

Author

Sarah Pruitt

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

Date Accessed

January 17,

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

October 3,

Original Published Date

January 20,