Jean Toomer Critical Essay | Critical Essay by John F. Callahan

Critical Essay by John F. Callahan

SOURCE: “‘By de Singin' uh de Song’: The Search for Reciprocal Voice in Cane,” in In the African-American Grain: Call-and-Response in Twentieth-Century Black Fiction, University of Illinois Press, First Paperback Edition, 2001, pp. 62-114.

In the following essay, Callahan addresses Toomer's use of American vernacular and song in Cane, particularly his use of spirituals and folk songs.

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In The Conjure Woman Charles W. Chesnutt adapted African-American call-and-response to a radically different cultural situation. Uncle Julius performs for a white audience, and his stories challenge his listeners' values and in small, important ways exert a salutary, subversive influence on their lives. Chesnutt's critical distance allows Uncle Julius to manipulate the color line between black dialect and standard English. Nevertheless, neither Chesnutt's black storyteller nor his white narrator crosses over into the other's verbal territory. It remained for later writers to take down the imaginary fence between the spoken and the written...
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