Books with title Cane

“A breakthrough in prose and poetical writing. . . . This book should be on all readers’ and writers’ desks and in their minds.”―Maya Angelou First published in 1923, Jean Toomer’s Cane is an innovative literary work―part drama, part poetry, part fiction―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 published with a new afterword by Rudolph Byrd of Emory University and Henry Louis Gates Jr. of Harvard University, who provide groundbreaking biographical information on Toomer, place his writing within the context of American modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, and examine his shifting claims about his own race and his pioneering critique of race as a scientific or biological concept.

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 masterpiece of the Harlem Renaissance and a canonical work in both the American and the African American literary traditions, Cane is now available in a revised and expanded Norton Critical Edition. Originally published in 1923, Jean Toomer’s Cane remains an innovative literary work―part drama, party poetry, part fiction. This revised Norton Critical Edition builds upon the First Edition (1988), which was edited by the late Darwin T. Turner, a pioneering scholar in the field of African American studies. The Second Edition begins with the editors’ introduction, a major work of scholarship that places Toomer within the context of American Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. The introduction provides groundbreaking biographical information on Toomer and examines his complex, contradictory racial position as well as his own pioneering views on race. Illustrative materials include government documents containing contradictory information on Toomer’s race, several photographs of Toomer, and a map of Sparta, Georgia―the inspiration for the first and third parts of Cane. The edition reprints the 1923 foreword to Cane by Toomer’s friend Waldo Frank, which helped introduce Toomer to a small but influential readership. Revised and expanded explanatory annotations are also included. “Backgrounds and Sources” collects a wealth of autobiographical writing that illuminates important phases in Jean Toomer’s intellectual life, including a central chapter from The Wayward and the Seeking and Toomer’s essay on teaching the philosophy of Russian psychologist and mystic Georges I. Gurdjieff, “Why I Entered the Gurdjieff Work.” The volume also reprints thirty of Toomer’s letters from 1919–30, the height of his literary career, to correspondents including Waldo Frank, Sherwood Anderson, Claude McKay, Horace Liveright, Georgia O’Keeffe, and James Weldon Johnson. An unusually rich “Criticism” section demonstrates deep and abiding interest in Cane. Five contemporary reviews―including those by Robert Littell and W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke―suggest its initial reception. From the wealth of scholarly commentary on Cane, the editors have chosen twenty-one major interpretations spanning eight decades including those by Langston Hughes, Robert Bone, Darwin T. Turner, Charles T. Davis, Alice Walker, Gayl Jones, Barbara Foley, Mark Whalan, and Nellie Y. McKay. A Chronology, new to the Second Edition, and an updated Selected Bibliography are also included.

"[Cane] has been reverberating in me to an astonishing degree. I love it passionately; could not possibly exist without it." ―Alice Walker 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 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.

“A breakthrough in prose and poetical writing. . . . This book should be on all readers’ and writers’ desks and in their minds.”—Maya AngelouFirst published in 1923, Jean Toomer’s Cane is an innovative literary work—part drama, part poetry, part fiction—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 published with a new afterword by Rudolph Byrd of Emory University and Henry Louis Gates Jr. of Harvard University, who provide groundbreaking biographical information on Toomer, place his writing within the context of American modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, and examine his shifting claims about his own race and his pioneering critique of race as a scientific or biological concept.

First published in 1923, “Cane” by Jean Toomer, is one of the most significant books to come out of the Harlem Renaissance. Jean Toomer, born Nathaniel Pinchback Toomer in Washington D. C. in 1894, was raised by his mother and her wealthy parents after being abandoned by his father as a baby. While he spent much of his life on the East Coast and at various colleges in Chicago and Wisconsin, he worked for several months in 1921 as a principal at a newly formed agricultural and industrial school for blacks in rural Sparta, Georgia, near where his father had lived. This experience gave Toomer a new-found understanding of the struggle of African-Americans in a society full of white supremacy and racial violence. At the end of his time in the South, Toomer began writing “Cane” and based the book on both the rural and urban lives of blacks in early 20th century America. The novel is organized into a series of loosely and thematically related vignettes and contains numerous literary styles, such as prose, poetry, and dramatic play-like passages of dialogue. “Cane” is a classic masterpiece of modernism and an important testament on the lives and struggles of African-Americans in the early part of the 20th century. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.