Books with author Jean Toomer

Largely ignored upon its initial publication in 1923, Jean Toomer’s Cane is now regarded as a precursor of the Harlem Renaissance and a masterpiece of modernist American literature.Some have called Cane a prose poem, but it truly defies classification. Toomer weaves together short stories, poetry, and drama to sketch a provocative and haunting portrait of (mostly) southern African American life that is as deep and rich as the cane fields that feature prominently in the book. Born in Washington, DC, the grandson of a former governor of Louisiana, Toomer attended schools in Wisconsin, Chicago, and New York. He began writing some of the pieces that make up Cane as early as 1918, but it was a stint as principal of a black agricultural institute in Sparta, Georgia, in 1921-22 that inspired his greatest work. After publishing Cane, Toomer would never publish anything like it again—no one has. He died shortly before Cane was “rediscovered” in the late 1960s. After being out of print for four decades, Cane finally began receiving the attention that it deserved. Alice Walker has said of Cane “I love it passionately” and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has written that “Cane is arguably the most sophisticated work of literature created over the course of the Harlem Renaissance.”

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.

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 is a 1923 novel by noted Harlem Renaissance author Jean Toomer. The novel 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 is a 1923 novel by noted Harlem Renaissance author Jean Toomer. The novel 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] 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.

'Cane' is a novel and possibly the best-known work by Jean Toomer. The novel is built up in a series of vignettes that deal with the origins and experiences of African Americans in the United States. The vignettes picture the South in sketches, short stories and poems by. A book whose tap roots run deep in the Southern soil, and whose music sways our emotions as only primitive desires can.

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 Walker This 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