Brown, Sterling Allen - Charles H. Rowell (essay date 1997)
Charles H. Rowell (essay date 1997)
SOURCE: Rowell, Charles H. “Sterling A. Brown and the Afro-American Folk Tradition.” In Harlem Renaissance Re-examined: A Revised and Expanded Edition, edited by Victor A. Kramer and Robert A. Russ, pp. 333-53. Troy, N.Y.: The Whitson Publishing Company, 1997.
[In the following essay, Rowell explores how Brown's studies of African American folk traditions and culture impacted his poetic work.]
One of the concerted efforts of the “New Negro” writers of the Twenties and Thirties was the attempt to reinterpret black life in America and thereby provide a more accurate, more objective, representation of black people than that popularized in the reactionary and sentimental literature of the preceding decades. Alain Locke, a major voice of the New Negro Movement, wrote in the mid-Twenties that “the Negro to-day wishes to be known for what he is, even in his faults and short comings, and scorns a...
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