Rereading the Harlem Renaissance: Race, Class, and Gender in the Fiction of Jessie Fauset, Zora Neale Hurston, and Dorothy West

by Sharon L. Jones

Overview

African American writers of the Harlem Renaissance generally fall into three aesthetic categories: the folk, which emphasizes oral traditions, African American English, rural settings, and characters from lower socioeconomic levels; the bourgeois, which privileges characters from middle class backgrounds; and the proletarian, which favors overt critiques of oppression by contending that art should be an instrument of propaganda. Depending on critical assumptions regarding what constitutes authentic African American literature, some writers have been valorized, others dismissed.

This rereading of the Harlem Renaissance gives special attention to Fauset, Hurston, and West. Jones argues that all three aesthetics influence each of their works, that they have been historically mislabeled, and that they share a drive to challenge racial, class, and gender oppression. The introduction provides a detailed historical overview of the Harlem Renaissance and the prevailing aesthetics of the period. Individual chapters analyze the works of Hurston, West, and Fauset to demonstrate how the folk, bourgeois, and proletarian aesthetics figure into their writings. The volume concludes by discussing the writers in relation to contemporary African American women authors.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780313323263
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	12/30/2002
Series:	Contributions in Afro-American and African Studies: Contemporary Black Poets , #207
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

SHARON L. JONES is Assistant Professor of English at Earlham College, where she teaches African American literature, humanities, modern literature, 19th-century literature, and contemporary literature. She is coeditor of The Prentice Hall Anthology of African American Literature (2000).

Table of Contents

Introduction
Deconstructing the Black Bourgeoisie: Subversions and Diversions in the Fiction of Jessie Fauset
"How It Feels to Be Colored Me": Social Protest in the Fiction of Zora Neale Hurston
A Closet Revolutionary: The Politics of Representation in the Fiction of Dorothy West
Conclusion
Selected Bibliography
Index