UNIT 3: THE HARLEM

RENAISSANCE
 Emerged in 1918, blossomed in the mid- to late 1920s, and then faded in the mid-
1930s.
The black wanted to be recognized poets and part of the mainstream tradition.
Unconsciously, they wanted to write as if they were white people.
An African American artist should challenge the mainstream cannon of art.
African art is discovered by the Europeans in the 1930s, but many people
thought that was not art. African American people created an art that was
beautiful for them, not for the white.
The black are Americans and Africans, what creates a very interesting social
and cultural blend.

The Harlem Renaissance started at the beginning of the 20th century as a

consequence of the big migration from the south to the north. The went to Chicago
and New York, where they lived in Harlem. Creation of a new black middle class,
which was interested in arts, music, plays and literature. They wanted a
literature that they could identify with (African-American experience). Also,
there was a racial consciousness and political awareness what caused the creation
of the NAACP and the publication of books of black people. Even though literature
was very important, music was even more in this movement.
The Cotton Club was a club where all white people were allowed to go. Only
whites (mainly men) were allowed to go, and black people worked there.
White people prefer black poetry, music. They “hated” them but in the free time,
they enjoyed going to the cotton club and reading their poetry.

Characteristics of the Harlem Renaissance:

- No common literary style or topic. Only about African American experience.
Depending on the origin of the author, this experience will be represented
differently.
- Diversity and experimentation.

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 - Sense of taking part in a common endeavour.
- Commitment to giving artistic expression to the African American
experience.
- Contemporary to modernism.
- Interested in expressing the emotions of the characters and the narrator.
Emotionally charged narrative and poetry.
- Challenging the foundations of American poetics, which did not want to
express any emotions.
- Difference between blues and jazz. Blues is more sad, dramatic while jazz is
more danceable and enjoyable.

Common themes:
- Racial pride. They thought they were beautiful.
- An interest in the roots of the 20th-century African American experience in
Africa
- A desire for social and political equality.

Literary expression:
- Langston Hughes’s weaving of the rhythms of African American Music into
his poems of ghetto life.
- Claude McKay's use of the sonnet form as the vehicle for his impassioned
poems attacking racial violence. He creates an image of the African-American
as a warrior. The white Americans are seen as monsters. That is to say,
African-Americans are described in a positive way, and the White in a
negative way. He uses classical forms for revolutionary issues.
- The glamour and the grit of Harlem life.
- Zora Neale Hurston: Traditional life in the South.

Ending:
-  The Great Depression of the 1930s: the NAACP and the Urban League shifted
their interests to economic and social issues of the African-American.
-  Many influential black writers and literary promoters left New York City
in the early 1930s.
- The Harlem Riot of 1935.

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 - Among the new young artists who appeared in the 1930s and 1940s, social
realism replaced modernism and primitivism as the dominant mode of
expression.

The literary word is a representation of the real world. As it is a representation, we

have different modes: modernism, realism, Harlem Renaissance, etc. The latter
used techniques of modernism, primitivism and at the end there is a shift towards
realism.

 Influence:
- Changed forever the dynamics of African American arts and literature in
the United States.
- Inspired writers such as Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright to pursue literary
careers in the late 1930s and the 1940s.
- Not confined to the United States: The founders of the Négritude movement in
the French Caribbean.

The Harlem Renaissance was very influential because it is the first African
American cultural movement. There had been poets in the 19th centuries and short
story writers and novel writers, but they were isolated. In the 20th century, most of
them lived in Harlem and had a group and a kind of consciousness, to create an
African American art.
The Harlem Renaissance was a movement that included the US, the Caribbean
Islands, and some parts of Africa. There is a link between the Harlem
Renaissance, the British Caribbean, The French Caribbean and some countries in
Africa.

W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963)
- He wrote The Souls of the Black Folk, and it
was very influential during the Harlem
Renaissance.

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 - Double consciousness: American and African heritage. He agreed that
Literature creates identity.
That creates a sort of community.
- We are seen through the eyes of the others.
-  Literature as a tool in the struggle for political liberation. Literature was a sort
of propaganda.
-  Beauty in literature is not so important as the content. It has to reflect our
identity and create a consciousness.
- They prefer realistic literature
Alain Locke (1885-1954)
- Plane style, no ornamental.
- “The New Negro” (1925): An Anthology
which created modern black culture, because
it was quite old fashioned.
-  Emergence of a new consciousness:
progressive force to create a new identity,
culture, literature and creating the
possibilities for a change. For that, it was
necessary to create a common
consciousness. He never thought of isolated
individuals, but the African-Americans as a
whole. He also wrote about the elite who would guide the rest of the African-
Americans.

Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

- He wrote “The Artist and the Racial
Mountain. (1926)”
- In the early 20s, he wrote the “Be bop” it is an
essay. He compared people with the jazz
music. He put humor in serious topics.
- He criticizes the double consciousness. He
thought they were only black.

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- He emphasizes a Negro cultural integrity. The African-American have to be
seen in terms of union.
- Race informs cultural perspective and it also approaches artists to working-
class negro life. The greatest cultural production of the African Americans is
Jazz, which comes from the African American working class.
- He criticizes the idea of an educated elite, maybe because of his experience in
the Soviet Union.

The notion of "twoness", a divided awareness of one's identity, was introduced by

W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the founders of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the author of the influential book
The Souls of Black Folks (1903).

Common themes of the Harlem Renaissance: alienation, marginality, the use of

folk material, the use of the blues tradition, the problems of writing for an elite
audience.

I, Too (1926)
I, Too is not an aggressive poem, it defines the American community
- A response of Whitman’s poem I hear America Singing from a black
perspective.
- Five stanzas, the two first stanzas are in present and the last stanzas are in
future. (Hopes of what happen in the future).
- Repetition of the poetic voice (I)
- Celebration of a nation – patriotic poem, he’s proud of the country despite the
history. The last one he is saying that his people is too American.
- “They send me to eat in the kitchen” – they are using them. In the next lines he
shows a positive attitude.
- The last stanza is that they are going to realise how they are treating black
people.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers (1920)

- He talks about his roots.
- Repetition of I, river.

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- He has chosen the rivers according to the representation of 4 civilizations and
trough the world.
- First stanza: making a comparison between human beings and rivers. It refers to
the history.
- He mentions the rivers but also what he is assessed to do.
- “I’ve seen […]”  political and social changes
- The water of the rivers is dusky (dark). My person and the community are
here since the beginning of the world.

The Weary Blues (1926)

Sad blues
The speaker is a man that is watching someone playing the piano.
- Use of colloquial language.
- State of mind, he feels isolated, he is marginalized from a society.

Claude Mckay (1889-1948)

He is not an African-American, he is Caribbean-
American. McKay is radical in his content. In the
1920s he moved to America and saw the
situation that black population was living. As he
has black skin, he is considered a African-
American, so he receives the same treatment.
His poems America and If We Must Die follow
the pattern of the Shakespeare’s sonnet.

America (1921)
- He is describing America.
- America is personified, America is a female.
- He doesn’t know how to feel about America. America is a suffer, as America
is the tiger.
- “I stand within her walls with not shred”  he feels in a prison, but he feels
good there.

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 - He is in love with America, but she has a hate-love America. About feeling
disgusted about the nation, but also love it.

If We Must Die (1919)

It is a violence, McKay (violence language), Hughes (pacific)
- He calls white: monsters, the common foe…
- He refuses to accept the situation
- He want to fight against the racism

Georgia Douglas Johnson (1880-1966)

Black Woman (1918)
- She has the ambivalent feeling because she wants to
have a child but she has fear.
- Anxiety and love, she doubts about the baby.
- The monster men: white. The first collection is rather
about motherhood, women experiences…
The Heart of a Woman (1918)
- It is about sexism
- The heart is a metaphor of her desires
- She wants to be free.
- Dreams and reality.
- Another interpretation is about women that want to become artists.

Nella Larsen (1891-1964)

Passing (1929)
She was mixed. She was born in Chicago. She married a
scholar on Physics but then they divorce.
Themes:
- Colourism: social racist practice that means that
people with white skins are privileges.
- Racial ambiguity and Racial identity
- Race, class, gender, and sexuality. It affects more
women.

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 - White-passing: the performance of race. Gendered narrative.
- Gains of “passing” respectability.
- Tragic finale: the figure of the “Race traitor” and “tragic mulatta”. The Race
traitor, the black community think that these people are reinforcing the
subordination.

Richard Wright (1908-1960)

A Man Who Was Almost a Man (1961)
- The title is also about race
- Black men are not considered as men
- The protagonist (Dave) wanted to be
independence, protect the family.
- He kills an animal (something at the beginning
without importance in the story), but is a mule:
mixed animal, like him.
- Metaphor of the mule and Dave. He feels like
a mule since he considered people only wanted
him to work.
- Setting: the south