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Quinebaug Valley Campus Library

Quinebaug Valley Black History Month

The literary influence of the Harlem Renaissance can hardly be overstated, as the fiction, poetry, and dramatic work that came out of the movement emerged as unequivocal evidence that Black people were people and that the qualities of genius and vision were as potent in them as in any other group of human beings. As in the category of “race,” the historical artistic category of the Harlem Renaissance contains a vibrant range of experiences, styles, and attitudes, ranging from the radical defiance of Claude McKay to the flamboyant lyricism of Zora Neale Hurston.

Literature: Black Subjectivity

Langston Hughes (1901-1967)

Langston Hughes is perhaps the most widely known figure of the Harlem Renaissance, writing lasting, resonant poetry, fiction, drama, journalism, theory, and creative nonfiction, all of which was both accessible and profound. In his poem Harlem, Hughes ponders if the deferred dreams in Harlem are like the rotten smell of meat or have the potential to explode, foreshadowing the protests & uprisings of the 1960s.

Zora Neal Hurston (1891-1960)

Harlem Renaissance author Zora Neal Hurston, well-known and controversial in her time, fell out of favor among critics and readers for some time, but over the last three decades has been hailed for her highly original and rich depictions of Black life. An anthropologist and folklorist with a commitment to recording dialect, Hurston is best known for her 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, which follows the life of Janie Crawford, a Black woman living in Florida, as she seeks to claim ownership of her own destiny in the face of the brutal realities of her gender and race (not to mention natural disaster).

Jean Toomer (1894-1967)

Jean Toomer’s literary prowess as a fiction writer, playwright and poet come together in his most influential work, the experimental multi-genre novel Cane, comprising short scenes, verse, and dramatic dialogues that tell stories of Southern life, disturbing and luminous by turns. Toomer’s ambivalence about being associated with the Harlem Renaissance reflected his resistance to racial categorization itself, as reductive and dehumanizing.

See more on Jean Toomer:

Toomer, Jean (1894-1967)

How Jean Toomer Rejected the Black-White Binary

"In the Land of Cotton": Economics and Violence in Jean Toomer's Cane

James Baldwin (1924-1987)

The Harlem Renaissance’s influence on James Baldwin was not indirect; he was inspired and influenced at Frederick Douglass Junior High School in Harlem in the 1930s by his French teacher, the great writer Countee Cullen. Baldwin became one of America’s most influential public intellectuals, especially in contributing to Black liberation and the Civil Rights movement. 2024 marks the centenary of his birth. In the digital exhibition Chez Baldwin from the National Museum of African American History and Culture, you can tour his final home in the South of France.

Watch If Beale Street Could Talk

Maya Angelou (1928-2014)

Maya Angelou was inspired by the Harlem Renaissance and James Baldwin, whom she befriended, and became a national figure embodying personal and collective resilience. Her most famous work is her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, documents her life surviving sexual abuse, poverty, and the racism of the Jim Crow era and its aftermath, all without an ounce of self-pity or self-aggrandizement. Her work continues to resonate with so many in part because she so effortlessly sees her own story as bound up in the stories of others and because the hope she claims is wide-eyed and hard won.

See more on Maya Angelou:

Maya Angelou's path crossed worlds of art, culture, politics

Toni Morrison (1931-2019)

Toni Morrison was the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature for her monumental contributions to world literature, especially her novels chronicling African American life (read author Zadie Smith praise Morrison's short fiction). Her fiction centers Black Americans in history from the 19th century to contemporary life, in stories that are filled with surreal and magical elements, told in "the voices of men, women, children and even ghosts in layered polyphony." Despite the fantastical elements, the stories are never escapist, always remaining grounded in realistic characters who persevere. In her character's lives, we can see the workings of history unfold, such as in Beloved, when the slavecatcher called "Schoolteacher" reveals the evil logic of profit as applied to his trade, where he wants to avoid killing the enslaved people he hunts because "[u]nlike a snake or a bear" a dead enslaved person "was not worth his own dead weight in coin." Learn more about Tony Morrison through this online exhibit, Sites of Memory.

See more on Toni Morrison:

Lessons we can learn from Toni Morrison

Watch Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am
Watch Beloved