Books with author Jean Toomer

A striking mosaic of prose, poetry, and dramatic dialogue, Jean Toomer’s Cane has come to be considered a masterpiece of the Harlem Renaissance. Structured as a series of vignettes ripe with longing, passion, violence, and revenge, the haunting novel gives a powerful voice to the interior lives of African Americans in the rural South and urban North.Championed for its unsparing honesty and psychological insight by such luminaries as Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Alice Walker, and Maya Angelou, Cane shines as a beacon to generations of African American writers who followed. Revised edition: Previously published as Cane, this edition of Cane (AmazonClassics Edition) includes editorial revisions.

"[Cane] has been reverberating in me to an astonishing degree. I love it passionately; could not possibly exit without it." — Alice Walker "A breakthrough in prose and poetical writing …. This book should be on all readers' and writers' desks and in their minds." — Maya Angelou Hailed by critics for its literary experimentation and vivid portrayal of African-American characters and culture, Cane represents one of the earliest expressions of the Harlem Renaissance. Combining poetry, drama, and storytelling, it contrasts life in an African-American community in the rural South with that of the urban North. Author Jean Toomer (1894–1967) drew upon his experiences as a teacher in rural Georgia to create a variety of Southern psychological realism that ranks alongside the best works of William Faulkner. The book's three-part structure, ranging from South to North and back again, is united by its focus on the lives of African-American men and women in a world of bigotry, violence, passion, and tenderness.

A literary masterpiece of the Harlem Renaissance, Cane is a powerful work of innovative fiction evoking black life in the South. The sketches, poems, and stories of black rural and urban life that make up Cane are rich in imagery. Visions of smoke, sugarcane, dusk, and flame permeate the Southern landscape: the Northern world is pictured as a harsher reality of asphalt streets. Impressionistic, sometimes surrealistic, the pieces are redolent of nature and Africa, with sensuous appeals to eye and ear.

A lyrical “groundbreaking work” of the Harlem Renaissance, praised by writers from Langston Hughes to Maya Angelou and Alice Walker (The Washington Post). “It would be good to hear their songs . . . reapers of the sweet-stalked cane, cutters of the corn . . . even though their throats cracked, and the strangeness of their voices deafened me.” —“Harvest Song,” Jean Toomer Published in 1923, Jean Toomer’s Cane has long been recognized as a pioneering work in African American literature. Employing a modernist, nontraditional structure of thematically linked prose vignettes, poems, and dialogue presented in evocative, often mournful lyrical tones, Toomer created a unique impressionistic mosaic of the inner lives of African Americans in the early twentieth century, encompassing the rural South and the urban North. Deeply felt and beautifully expressed, Toomer’s masterpiece continues to resonate almost a century after it was written. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

First published in 1923, Jean Toomer's Cane is an innovative literary work powerfully evoking black life in the South. Rich in imagery, Toomer's impressionistic, sometimes surrealistic sketches of Southern rural and urban life are permeated by visions of smoke, sugarcane, dusk, and fire; the northern world is pictured as a harsher reality of asphalt streets. This iconic work of American literature is a classic of both American modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, and challenges the idea of race as a scientific or biological concept.

The book is structured as a series of vignettes revolving around the origins and experiences of African Americans in the United States. The vignettes alternate in structure between narrative prose, poetry, and play-like passages of dialogue. As a result, the novel has been classified as a composite novel or as a short story cycle. Though some characters and situations recur between vignettes, the vignettes are mostly freestanding, tied to the other vignettes thematically and contextually more than through specific plot details.

Cane explores spiritual and emotional frustration, failure of basic communication between individuals, and repression of natural energies. It reveals the chaos of contemporary black American life and calls for a spiritual awakening. A land mark novel that changed the way America looked at black writers. I love it passionately; could not possibly exist without it. — Alice WalkerThis book should be on all readers' and writers' desks and in their minds. — Maya Angelou[Toomer avoided] the pitfalls of propaganda and moralizing on the one hand and the snares of a false and hollow race pride on the other hand. — Montgomery Gregory

“Cane . . . exerted a powerful influence over the Harlem Renaissance”—The New York TimesCane is a collection of short stories, poems, and dramas, written by Harlem Renaissance author Jean Toomer in 1923. The stories focus around African-American culture in both the North and the South during times when racism and Jim Crow laws still abounded. Vignettes of the lives of various African-American characters tell what it was like to live both in the rural areas of Georgia and the urban streets of the northern cities. The book was heralded as an influential part of the Harlem Renaissance and, at the time, influenced artists of every background. Authors, dramatists, and even jazz musicians could find influence and inspiration in the pages of Cane’s work. Both Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes themselves visited Sparta, Georgia, after reading Toomer’s work. Unfortunately, the white public did not react well to Cane, and the sales dropped. The book did not become revered as the classic work it is today until the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. Now you can read this new edition of what is considered one of the best works of the Harlem Renaissance.

Karintha, at twelve, was a wild flash that told the other folks just what it was to live. At sunset, when there was no wind, and the pinesmoke 2from over by the sawmill hugged the earth, and you couldnt see more than a few feet in front, her sudden darting past you was a bit of vivid color, like a black bird that flashes in light. With the other children one could hear, some distance off, their feet flopping in the two-inch dust. Karintha’s running was a whir. It had the sound of the red dust that sometimes makes a spiral in the road. At dusk, during the hush just after the sawmill had closed down, and before any of the women had started their supper-getting-ready songs, her voice, high-pitched, shrill, would put one’s ears to itching. But no one ever thought to make her stop because of it. She stoned the cows, and beat her dog, and fought the other children... Even the preacher, who caught her at mischief, told himself that she was as innocently lovely as a November cotton flower. - Taken from "Cane" written by Jean Toomer