Anthologies of African American Writing

Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader

"The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader" . Ed. David Levering Lewis. New York: Viking, 1994. xlvii+766 pp.

Part I: Essays and Memoirs: Returning soldiers / W.E.B. Du Bois -- The migration of the talented tenth / Carter G. Woodson -- Gift of the Black tropics / W.A. Domingo -- Africa for the Africans ; Liberty Hall Emancipation Day speech / Marcus Garvey -- On Marcus Garvey / Mary White Ovington -- From Black Manhattan / James Weldon Johnson -- The new Negro / Alain Locke -- Jazz at home / Joel A. Rogers -- Reflections on O'Neill's plays / Paul Robeson -- The Negro digs up his past / Arthur A. Schomburg -- The task of Negro womanhood / Elise Johnson McDougald -- [Excerpts] From The big sea ; The Negro artist and the racial mountain / Langston Hughes -- The Negro-art hokum / George S. Schuyler -- Criteria of Negro art / W.E.B. Du Bois -- Critiques of Carl Van Vechten's Nigger heaven / Du Bois and J.W. Johnson -- The Caucasian storms Harlem / Rudolph Fisher -- Aaron Douglas chats about the Harlem Renaissance / Aaron Douglas -- Negro art and America / Albert C. Barnes -- The Negro takes his place in American art / Alain Locke -- The Negro artist and modern art / Romare Bearden -- From Dust tracks on a road / Zora Neale Hurston -- [Excerpts] From A long way from home / Claude McKay -- La bourgeoisie noire / E. Franklin Frazier -- With Langston Hughes in the USSR / Louise Thompson Patterson -- Harlem runs wild / Claude McKay -- Blueprint for Negro writing / Richard Wright -- The Negro Renaissance and its significance / Charles S. Johnson –
Part II: Poetry: Song ; Hatred / Gwendolyn Bennett -- The day-breakers ; Golgotha is a mountain / Arna Bontemps -- Southern road ; Osyssey of Big Boy ; Frankie and Johnny ; Ma Rainey ; Long gone ; Georgie Grimes ; Remembering Nat Turner / Sterling Brown -- The young voice cries / Mae Cowdery -- The wayside well / Joseph S. Cotter -- For a lady I know ; Incident ; Harlem wine ; Yet do I marvel ; Heritage ; From the dark tower ; To a brown boy ; Tableau ; Saturday's child ; Two poets ; To France ; Nothing endures ; Requiescam / Countee Cullen -- The death bed / Waring Cuney -- La vie c'est la vie ; Dead fires / Jessie Redmon Fauset -- The Negro speaks of rivers ; I, too ; America ; The weary blues ; Jazzonia ; Mother to son ; Negro ; Mulatto ; Elevator boy ; Red silk stockings ; Ruby Brown ; Elderly race leaders ; Dream variation ; Goodbye, Christ ; Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria / Langston Hughes -- Children of the sun ; The banjo player / Fenton Johnson -- Let me not lose my dream ; Old Black men ; Black woman ; The heart of a woman ; I want to die while you love me / Georgia Douglas Johnson -- My race ; A Southern road ; Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem ; Poem / Helene Johnson -- The white witch ; The color sergeant ; O Black and unknown bards ; Go down death ; The creation / James Weldon Johnson -- If we must die ; Baptism ; The white house ; The Negro's friend ; On a primitive canoe ; The tropics in New York ; When dawn comes to the city ; The desolate city ; The Harlem dancer ; St. Isaac's Church, Petrograd ; Barcelona / Claude McKay -- Lady, Lady / Anne Spencer -- Song of the son ; Georgia dusk ; The blue meridian / Jean Toomer –
Part III: Fiction: From The emperor Jones / Eugene O'Neill -- [Excerpts] From Cane / Jean Toomer -- From Birthright / T.S. Stribling -- From There is confusion ; From Plum bun / Jessie Redmon Fauset -- From The fire in the flint / Walter White -- Wedding day / Gwendolyn Bennett -- [Excerpts] From Home to Harlem ; From Banjo ; From Banana bottom / Claude McKay -- From Quicksand ; From Passing / Nella Larsen -- From The closing door / Angelina Weld Grimke -- The typewriter / Dorothy West -- From The dark princess / W.E.B. Du Bois -- From The walls of Jericho / Rudolph Fisher -- [Excerpts] From Tropic death / Eric Walrond -- Smoke, lillies and jade! / Richard Bruce Nugent -- Luani of the jungles ; From Not without laughter ; From The ways of white folks ; The blues I'm playing / Langston Hughes -- Cordelia the crude ; Harlem: a forum of Negro life ; From The blacker the berry ... ; From Infants of the spring / Wallace Thurman -- From Black no more / George Schuyler -- From God sends Sunday ; From Black thunder / Arna Bontemps -- From One way to heaven / Countee Cullen -- Drenched in light ; Color struck ; From Jonah's gourd vine / Zora Neale Hurston -- From Mule-bone / Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes.

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• "As one would expect from the author of "When Harlem Was in Vogue", the long 'Introduction' is excellent, as are the biographical notes. The headnotes are more modest, designed to accompany the selections rather than to stand alone" (Kinnamon 1997: 467).

Kinnamon 1997: 467]

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