The Collected Poems of Nikki Giovanni

I took a creative writing class in tenth grade. While I can’t say any of my output was remarkable, the best aspects of the class were the samples my teacher gave us of good quality stories and poetry. I hadn’t yet learned to appreciate poetry (it took two more years before that happened), yet I have always remembered one poem we read in class. I decided to go and find it.

The collected volume of Nikki Giovanni’s poetry was more than I anticipated reading. The volume has more than 350 pages of poetry and extensive endnotes (another 100 pages). As I mentioned the other day, I read poetry for feeling, sound, and enjoyment factor. As it was, I only skimmed about half of the poems and I ignored the notes. I would read a poem in full if something about it caught my attention. Continue reading »

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson

I had to keep reminding myself that The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson was actually a novel. It was realistic, and it was engaging and entertaining at the same time. Even more, it has a place in history alongside true-life narratives as an account of what some African-Americans may have felt in the early decades of the 1900s: enslaved in a world that catered to whites. Continue reading »

Narrative in the Life of Frederick Douglass + The Listeners

In his narrative of life in slavery and what led him to escape, Frederick Douglass captured the chief dilemmas that slaves dealt with, including slavery of the mind. Douglass’s slavery in Baltimore and surrounding areas was horrendous, and yet it was, as he admitted, quite tame compared to those experiences that slaves on plantations in the South dealt with.

As I read, I was struck that the main obstacle that Douglass had to overcome was not the freezing weather, the starvation, the humiliations, and the beatings, but rather a broken will. Of course, all of the former abuses directly contributed to the later, but it is his will that allowed him to be himself amidst the horrors of slavery. Continue reading »

Black No More by George S. Schuyler

In 1934, an African-American doctor invented a surgical procedure that allowed black people to become white (specially, Nordic) in all respects. Black No More, Incorporated, became a highly profitable business, and the people of world were forever changed.

Such is the premise of George S. Schuyler’s Black No More. It caught my eye because of the science fiction/dystopian aspect. I don’t normally read science fiction, but to come across a Harlem Renaissance science fiction novel seemed so far out of the norm for that decade of African-American literature that it intrigued me.

I know I missed a lot of the humor of the era because of my unfamiliarity with most of the characters of the Renaissance. The novel’s pacing, characterization, and development also had plenty of flaws. But overall I loved the issues it raised about self image and society. It reminded me of issues today, especially the world’s obsession with body image. Today we have plastic surgery and liposuction to attempt to make everyone alike the world. Continue reading »

Moses, Man of the Mountain by Zora Neale Hurston

The introduction to my volume of Zora Neale Hurston’s retelling of the Biblical Exodus calls this a “badly flawed novel” and I’m sure it is. Hurston is basing her novel on a Biblical tale that lacks strong women characters, and she’s trying to make it feel modern. The introduction also criticizes the stereotyped way in which Hurston tries to capture black speech. It’s not written in dialect, but it does capture idioms and mannerisms.

All that said, I really liked reading Moses, Man of the Mountain. I have a fascination with retellings of the Exodus.* Because of that interest, then, I liked Hurston’s novel simply because of the premise: tell the story of Moses and the Hebrews basing it on African-American folkloric practices (hoodoo and magic). Continue reading »

Harlem Renaissance Poetry

Yesterday began Black History Month in the USA! The Harlem Renaissance-themed Classics Circuit began yesterday as well, and I hope you follow along as bloggers unite in reading classic works by African-Americans.

Although this post is not for the Circuit, in preparing for that Classics Circuit, I did a lot of preliminary reading about the era and I really wanted to dabble in the poetry. I meant to post this weeks ago, but it never happened and now it’s already February! It works well, though, because I’d like to write at least one post about African-American literature each week in February.

In my library shelf searches, I could not find a comprehensive collection of Countee Cullen and Claude McKay and any of the other, less well known African-American poets of the Renaissance. I still haven’t really found a comprehensive Harlem Renaissance poetry anthology at my library, but I did find an out-of-print 1941 anthology of poetry for children that met my needs. (Thank goodness for my library’s reciprocal borrowing program with 15 other libraries!). This allowed me to read a number of different poets who were writing during the Renaissance and before.

Although Golden Slippers was edited and prepared for a “young readers” audience, it’s applicable to all, and while the poetry in it is not my favorite, it seems to have an important overview of some of the poets of the near-contemporary age to the Renaissance. Researching online, I found more poems by each poet. I also focused on Langston Hughes a little bit in the past few weeks. Continue reading »

Jazz by Toni Morrison

Although I didn’t love Jazz as much as I loved Toni Morrison’s Beloved, I found it to have a similar depth. I know such depth requires me to reread it in order to truly sum up the main point of the novel. Because I’ve only read it once, I’m somewhat stumped as I go to write thoughts about it now. I am afraid these thoughts are rather jumbled and inaccurate given what the novel is supposed to be saying, so keep in mind that this is more a post about my impressions after reading it, not so much a “review.”

In some respects, Jazz seemed to capture the complexities of two different generations of African-Americans living in Harlem in the 1920s: the middle-aged and the young adult. But it also deals with redemption and forgiveness. It wasn’t a beautiful novel for me to read, but I’m glad I did read it. Continue reading »

My Antonia by Willa Cather

I loved My Antonia by Willa Cather when I read it in high school, and when I went to pick it up, I had some dim memories of characters and setting. I recalled that it was about rural Nebraska. It was about a boy and a girl. They lived on farms and played together. It was very cold in the winter. Life was tragic (That Event), and yet Antonia rises above it.

What surprised me was that all of those beautiful country scenes I remembered from the book happened in the first 80 pages! After that, Jim Burden moves to town. I remembered the details as I reread it, and it was kind of a fun experience to reread it for the first time and gain an open mind as my memory of events unfolded just before they would happen. Continue reading »

My Introduction to the Harlem Renaissance

In preparation for the upcoming (February) Harlem Renaissance Classics Circuit, I’ve been reading a lot of introductory material to prepare for the introductory information we need to write for the sign up post. As I mentioned yesterday, I don’t feel like an expert in anything, so I love having The Classics Circuit to get me motivated to research a subject in detail and feel a bit more coherent in one area.

That said, even reading three very different books about the Renaissance, I don’t feel I know it very well. I want to read half a dozen books written in the Renaissance decade. I want to read biographies and autobiographies of the characters influential to the movement. I want to immerse myself in the movement even further! I love this focused reading: it feel so satisfying. Continue reading »

Stories by Flannery O’Connor

To understand Flannery O’Connor’s short stories is understand the rural South that she was familiar with in the pre-1970s. Her stories focus on aspects character in human, every-day situations all revolving around her South, dealing with race relations, Christianity, rural versus city living, parent-child relationships, etc. She brings the reader into the settings by capturing thought processes, a style I found engaging. I enjoyed reading her stories, although they illustrated a lack of hope in human nature. Continue reading »