Cane | Suggested Reading

Cane What Do I Read Next?

Toomer's miscellaneous writings, including plays, letters, and reviews, have been collected in The Wayward and the Seeking, edited by Darwin Turner.

Toomer's contemporary in the Harlem Renaissance, Arna Bontemps, was responsible for many works of poetry, fiction and criticism. One of his most compelling works is God Sends Sunday, a novel based on the old blues tradition.

James Weldon Johnson was an African-American writer who preceded Toomer. Like Toomer, he struggled against being labeled and dismissed as a "black writer." His 1912 novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, was more recently published with an introduction by Arna Bontemps.

Among the many great works about African-American identity written since Toomer's time, one of the most influential and most stirring is Ralph Ellison's 1952 novel Invisible Man.

Jean Toomer and Claude McKay are generally considered to be the first writers of theHarlem

Renaissance. McKay gives today's...
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