A Renaissance in Harlem

ISBN-13: 9781430321835 / Angielski / Miękka / 2007 / 300 str.

Lionel Bascom

Opis

Lost for generations in the vaults of The Library of Congress, these remarkable essays by some of the era's finest writers, including Dorothy West and Ralph Ellison, vividly evoke daily life during the Harlem Renaissance.

The Lindy-Hoppers at the Savoy began to practice acrobatic routines, and to do absurd things for the entertainment of the whites, that probably never would have entered into their heads to attempt merely for their own effortless amusement. Some critics say that this is what happened to certain Negro writers, too -- that they ceased to write to amuse themselves and began to write to amuse and entertain white people, and in doing so distorted and over colored their material, and left out a great many things they thought would offend their American brothers of a lighter complexion. All of us know that the gay and sparkling life of the so-called Negro Renaissance of the '20s was not so gay and sparkling beneath the surface as it looked.

This is a collection of lost stories about the Harlem Renaissance. They are the voices of ordinary people who came to Harlem to start new lives. They created a new culture, the first generation of African-Americans.