Cane Toomer Jean

Jean Toomer'sCane is one of the most significant works to come out of the Harlem Renaissance and is considered to be a masterpiece in American modernist literature due to its distinct structure and style. First published in 1923 and told through a series of vignettesCane uses poetry prose and play-like dialogue to create a window into the varied lives of African Americans living in the rural South and urban North during a time when Jim Crow laws pervaded and racism reigned. Review “[Toomer] is American literature’s greatest most enduring enigma. . . . But here in this lush bleak book in his evocation of the world as it is instead of how it ought to be something hardier more useful is conveyed - of the possibilities for epiphany the reliable consolations of love and revenge. And in his style - this pastiche of poem autobiography and fable - there is an integration of the self that the life never afforded.”-Parul Sehgal The New York Times“Over the past 95 years this Harlem Renaissance ‘experiment’ - a mosaic of poems vignettes and short stories many of these last being shocking studies of loneliness and the longing for love - has risen from relative obscurity to become what it always was a groundbreaking work of 20th-century American literature.”-Michael Dirda The Washington Post About the Author Jean Toomer (1894-1967) was an African American novelist and poet. The son of a mixed-race freedman born into slavery who later joined ranks with the mulatto elite in Washington DC Toomer's lighter skin and upbringing in all-white schools and neighbourhoods caused him to not to identify as black or white but rather an American who represented a new mixed race. Despite his refusal to be bound or classified by race Toomer is considered one of the most important African American writers to come from the Harlem Renaissance. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. KARINTHA Her skin is like dusk on the eastern horizon O cant you see it O cant you see it Her skin is like dusk on the eastern horizon . . . When the sun goes down. Men had always wanted her this Karintha even as a child Karintha carrying beauty perfect as dusk when the sun goes down. Old men rode her hobby-horse upon their knees. Young men danced with her at frolics when they should have been dancing with their grownup girls. God grant us youth secretly prayed the old men. The young fellows counted the time to pass before she would be old enough to mate with them. This interest of the male who wishes to ripen a growing thing too soon could mean no good to her. Karintha at twelve was a wild flash that told the other folks just what it was to live. At sunset when there was no wind and the pine-smoke from over by the sawmill hugged the earth and you couldnt see more than a few feet in front her sudden darting past you was a bit of vivid color like a black bird that flashes in light. With the other children one could hear some distance off their feet flopping in the two-inch dust. Karintha's running was a whir. It had the sound of the red dust that sometimes makes a spiral in the road. At dusk during the hush just after the sawmill had closed down and before any of the women had started their supper-getting-ready songs her voice high-pitched shrill would put one's ears to itching. But no one ever thought to make her stop because of it. She stoned the cows and beat her dog and fought the other children . . . Even the preacher who caught her at mischief told himself that she was as innocently lovely as a November cotton flower. Already rumors were out about her. Homes in Georgia are most often built on the two-room plan. In one you cook and eat in the other you sleep and there love goes on. Karintha had seen or heard perhaps she had felt her parents loving. One could but imitate one's parents for to follow them was the way of God. She played <b>The Harlem Renaissance writer's innovative and groundbreaking novel depicting African American life in the South and North, with a foreword by National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree Zinzi Clemmons</b><br><br>Jean Toomer's <i>Cane</i> is one of the most significant works to come out of the Harlem Renaissance, and is considered to be a masterpiece in American modernist literature because of its distinct structure and style. First published in 1923 and told through a series of vignettes, <i>Cane</i> uses poetry, prose, and play-like dialogue to create a window into the varied lives of African Americans living in the rural South and urban North during a time when Jim Crow laws pervaded and racism reigned. While critically acclaimed and known today as a pioneering text of the Harlem Renaissance, the book did not gain as much popularity as other works written during the period. Fellow Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes believed <i>Cane</i>'s lack of a wider readership was because it didn't reinforce the stereotypes often associated with African Americans during the time, but portrayed them in an accurate and entirely human way, breaking the mold and laying the groundwork for how African Americans are depicted in literature. For the first time in Penguin Classics, this edition of <i>Cane</i> features a new introduction, suggestions for further reading, and notes by scholar George Hutchinson, and National Book Award Foundation 5 Under 35 novelist Zinzi Clemmons contributes a foreword.