Harlem Renaissance: An Assessment from Huggins, Nathan I. Harlem Renaissance. NY: Oxford UP, 1971. 1.

Harlem Renaissance brought the Black experience clearly within the general American cultural history. a. Remarkable coincidences and luck, provided a sizable chunk of real estate in the heart of Manhattan. b. The Black migration, from south to north, changed their image from rural to urban, from peasant to sophisticate. c. Harlem became a crossroads where Blacks interacted with and expanded their contacts internationally. d. Harlem Renaissance profited from a spirit of self-determination which was widespread after W.W.I. 2. Harlem Renaissance could not escape its history and culture in its attempt to create a new one. a. The "renaissance" echoed American progressivism in its faith in democratic reform, in its belief in art and literature as agents of change, and in its almost uncritical belief in itself and its future. b. The creation of the "New Negro" failed, but it was an American failure, similar to other frustrated promotions. c. The future of the "New Negro" was accepted without question. d. Just as the Whites, Black intellectuals were unprepared for the rude shock of the Great Depression; the HR was shattered by it because of naive assumptions about the centrality of culture, unrelated to economic and social realities. 3. Still the Harlem Renaissance had its significance. a. It became a symbol and a point of reference for everyone to recall. b. The name, more than the place, became synonymous with new vitality, Black urbanity, and Black militancy. c. It became a racial focal point for Blacks the world over; it remained for a time a race capital. d. It stood for urban pluralism; Alain Locke wrote: "The peasant, the student, the businessman, the professional man, artist, poet, musician, adventurer and worker, preacher and criminal, exploiter and social outcast, each group has come with its own special motives ... but their greatest experience has been the finding of one another." e. The complexity of the urban setting was important for Blacks to truly appreciate the variety of Black life. The race consciousness required that shared experience. 4. Harlem Renaissance's legacy is limited by the character of the Renaissance. a. It encouraged the new appreciation of folk roots and culture.

b. Peasant folk materials and spirituals provided a rich source for racial imagination and it freed the Blacks from the establishment of past condition. c. Harlem Renaissance was imprisoned by its innocence. The Harlem intellectuals, while proclaiming a new race consciousness, became mimics of Whites, wearing clothes and using manners of sophisticated Whites, earning the epithet "dicty niggers" from the very people they were supposed to be championing. d. Harlem Renaissance could not overcome the overwhelming White presence in commerce which defined art and culture. What was needed was a rejection of White values; they had to see Whites, without awe of love or awe of hate, and themselves truly, without myth or fantasy, in order that they could be themselves in life and art. e. Harlem Renaissance created an ethnic provincialism and its biggest gift could be a lesson from its failures. The biggest is in the strange separation of the Blacks from American culture. Except for a few Blacks, the most striking thing about them is that they are native American. The negative implications have been clear; Blacks, unlike other immigrants, had no immediate past and history and culture to celebrate. But the positive implications of American nativity have never been fully appreciated by them. It seems too simple: the Afro-American's history and culture is American, more completely so than most others in the country. f. At least the decade of the 1920s seems to have been too early for Blacks to have felt the certainty about native culture that would have freed them from crippling self-doubt. ... that is why the art of the Renaissance was so problematic, feckless, not fresh, not real. The lesson it leaves us is that the true Black Renaissance awaits Afro-Americans' claiming their patria, their nativity.

Harlem: 1. For whom is H a symbol, what does it symbolize? 2. What is real H, what is ist myth?

Larsen: Study Questions 1. The metaphor of passing accrues several layers of meaning. What are they? How do they relate to each other? 2. Whose story is this? Clare's or Irene's? 3. What does this passage mean: "[Irene] was caught between two allegiances, different, yet the same. Herself. Her race. Race: The thing that bound and suffocated her. Whatever steps she took, or if she took none at all, something would be crushed. A person or the race. Clare, herself, or the race. Or, it might be all three." 4. It has been suggested that Passing uses race more as a device to sustain suspense than as a compelling social issue. What is the relation of race to subjective experience in the text? 5. What is the significance of narrative endings in Larsen? Why does Passing refuse to specify how Clare is killed and who is responsible?

Hurston Study Questions 1. How do Hurston's stories demonstrate the complexity of the lives of common folks and the richness of their folk culture? 2. Compare and contrast Hurston's Janie with Jean Toomer's Fern. Consider especially the development of "conscious life" for each character. 3. Finish reading Their Eyes Were Watching God. Analyze Janie's development as an independent person in light of class discussion of Chapter 2. Comment further on the relationship between Janie and her listening friend, Pheoby. Or trace Hurston's use of folklore through the novel and comment on its significance. 4. One of the commonplaces about American slavery is that slaveholders often separated members of slave families from each other. Analyze the excerpt from Their Eyes Were Watching God as Hurston's attempt to heal the lingering impact of separation imposed by slavery and sexism.

Cullen Study Questions 1. What is the psychological effect that Cullen is trying to achieve in "Incident"? What is the effect of the poem's title and the poem's content? Why does Cullen call the eightyear-old a "Baltimorean"? What is the source of racism? Is it more powerful for being less definite? 2. What is Cullen's attitude toward God in "Yet Do I Marvel"? Why should he marvel that God would make a poet black and bid him sing? Why does he imply a paradox between poetry and blackness? 3. What happened at Scottsboro? Why does Cullen link the incident to the one that involved Sacco and Vanzetti? What is he saying when he notes that the poets sang for Sacco and Vanzetti but have not for Scottsboro? What is the wrong that Cullen implies has happened at Scottsboro? 4. Cullen grew up in a Methodist parsonage as the adopted son of a prominent Harlem pastor. Might the use of paradox about Christian religion and its practices in some of his poetry reflect his home experience? Which works and in which references? 5. In the poem "Yet Do I Marvel," Cullen makes an implicit comparison between black poets and the mythical figures of Tantalus and Sisyphus. Explain how this comparison functions within the world of the poem. 6. Lying behind Cullen's title choice for "From the Dark Tower" is the phrase "ivory tower." How does this fact help explain the poem as well as its dedication to Charles S. Johnson?

Hughes Study Questions 1. Langston Hughes' central purpose in writing was, in his own words, "to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America." How do the poems in this volume (Selected Poems) illustrate his attempt? 2. What effect does the image of rivers create in the Black's history? Why are the rivers ancient and dusky? 3. What is the dream Hughes refers to in "Harlem"? Why might it explode rather than dry up? Why should the poem be called "Harlem"? 4. Discuss what Hughes's poetry tells a reader about his theory of poetry. 5. Place Hughes's work in the context of Black musical forms invented in Harlem in the early twentieth century. Is Black poetry the way Hughes writes it, like jazz, a new genre? If so, is it invented or derivative? What are its characteristics? If "Black poetry" is a genre, does Countee Cullen write in it? 6. Hughes's poetry makes room for the experiences of women. Analyze "Mother to Son," "Madam and Her Madam," and "Madam's Calling Card," and explore the way he turns women's experiences into emblems of African-American experience. 7. Traditional critics have not called Hughes's poetry modernist, and yet his poetry reflects modernism both in his themes, his use of the image, and in terms of style. Locate specific points where you can see Hughes's modernism and demonstrate it in an essay.

Toomer Study Questions 1. What qualities do women have that are similar to those of the entire group of AfricanAmericans - at least as Toomer saw them? 2. What is the nature of the richness as well as pain in the culture represented in Cane? 3. What are the symbolistic aspects of the northern and southern black experience?