The Harlem Renaissance & Beyond – Literary Biographies of 100 Black Women Writers 1900–1945 - Softcover

Roses, Lorrainne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674372557 ISBN 13: 9780674372559

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1997

Synopsis

The lives and works of 100 black women novelists, short-story writers, playwrights, poets, essayists, critics, historians, journalists, and editors are chronicled in this book. All wrote between 1900 and 1945 and among those examined are Zora Neale Hurston, Katherine Dunham and Angelina Weld Grimke. Drawing on archival research and interviews, the book traces its subjects' contribution to literature, their concerns about race and gender, and their influences on their modern day counterparts in American literature. The book also explores the political, economic, and social awareness of the time.

About this title

Review

In the past, reviewers and critics have confined their examinations of the Harlem Renaissance to the literary contributions of male poets and authors such as Langston Hughes and Jean Toomer. However, Lorraine Roses and Ruth Randolph's "Harlem Renaissance and Beyond" presents a detailed and accessible biographical study of black women writers, active not only during the movement but in the years directly preceding and following its demise. By broadening and revising our understanding of this unique period in literary history, "Harlem Renaissance and Beyond" exposes the complexity of the political and economical factors which faced women wanting to publish work during this time...Well illustrated with rare archival photographs, the book offers an illuminating literary excavation of work by black women writers who have either been forgotten or marginalised; hence it achieves a timely revision of male-centred analyses of the movement.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674372557
• ISBN 13: 9780674372559
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432