Toomer, Jean (Vol. 22) - Introduction

Jean Toomer 1894–1967

Black American novelist, short story writer, poet, and dramatist.

Toomer was one of the most important writers of the Harlem Renaissance. "While his contemporaries of the Harlem School were still experimenting with a crude literary realism," according to Robert A. Bone, "Toomer had progressed beyond the naturalistic novel to 'the higher realism of the emotions,' to symbol, and to myth." His major work, Cane, is an extraordinary collection of prose and poetry combined in an experimental novel. It blends rural folkways with urban avant-garde culture.

(See also CLC, Vols. 1, 4, 13.)