This essay was first presented in 2010 as “Literary Movements and the 7th Anniversary of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance.” It is republished now to commemorate the current official centennial of the Harlem Renaissance. My long-term romance with the idea literary movements define and bookmark significant heroic moments in cultural history began long before I understood who or what had stolen my heart. Yet it seems to have been there for at least as long as long as earlier adolescent passions for playing football or running foot races. There can be little doubt that it played a major role in my decision to accept the challenge of co-authoring Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Facts on File/Infobase Publishing, with Sandra L. West) which documents and celebrates one of the most successful literary movements on record. September 2021 will mark the 18th anniversary of the encyclopedia’s publication and 2023 will marks its 20th. The fact that it continues to inform classroom discussions and to encourage further exploration of the 1920s Jazz Age says as much about the life-enhancing inspiration our hearts and souls draw from literary movements in general, as it does about this one book in particular. Emerging Patterns & The Bigger PictureIt is possible that in my middle-school years—a time when I read more outside classrooms than I did inside classrooms–– I came across allusions to America’s great Romantic, Realism, and Naturalism literary movements of the 1800s. I may have also stumbled onto references to the Harlem Renaissance, the Lost Generation, the Beats, and the Black Arts Movement of the next century; or onto Europe’s Symbolists, Surrealists, champions of Negritude, and Existentialists. But chances are I did not have half a clue what any of these meant. Some serious time would pass before I started connecting historical dots and pieced together the relevance of David Thoreau publishing Walden: or Life in the Woods (1854) only a year before Walt Whitman made his start on the journey that would become Leaves of Grass, and about nine years after Edgar Allen Poe became a literary immortal with The Raven and Other Poems (1845). Patterns began to emerge as I noted Emily Dickinson quietly (and a little madly perhaps) scribbling soul-exploding poem after soul-exploding poem at the same time that Mark Twain’s deepening appreciation for Southern culture inspired him to produce a string of classic works--The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Huckleberry Finn (1884) being only two of his better-known novels. The bigger picture became even more focused with the arrival of the beehive of writers, artists, and musicians who generated, sustained, and immortalized the Harlem Renaissance. There were writers like Jean Toomer, Claude McKay, and Jesse Redmond Faucet spinning out novels and poetry at the same time editors such as Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Charles S. Johnson debated the merits of their work and sponsored regular cash prizes to keep the honey of their endeavors flowing. The activities of the Harlem Renaissance spilled over into the 1960s and 1970s Black Arts Movement in a more enhanced form. Where their forebears had left off, a new generation of wordsmiths that included Amiri Baraka, Ishmael Reed, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, and Haki Madhubuti stepped in and forged ahead. More Recently in the Historical Literary SenseLiterary Cultural Migrations and the 18th Anniversary of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Part 1)The contemporary films Howl, featuring James Franco as Allen Ginsberg, and On the The Road, with Kristen Steward and Garrett Hedlund among other notable talents, provide insight into how the Beat movement formed, picked up steam, and evolved to become the definitive voice of a generation. In a similar and yet very different mode, in the book Gabriel Garcia Marquez, author Ilan Stavans sheds a brilliant light on the fairly modern Latino movement known as El Boom. In addition to the Nobel Prize-winning Garcia Marquez, El Boom also gave the world the towering figures of authors Mario Vargas Llosa, Julio Cortazar, Carlos Fuentes, and Isabel Allende.
Similar scenarios have unfolded at different points in literary history on continents across the globe and within different cultural settings. If these movements were about nothing more than the origins of certain books, they would still be exciting but lack a meaningful depth of emotion, or engaging dramas of ideology that sometimes ended in cultural feuds and sometimes resulted in love affairs. In short, they demonstrate possibilities for different ways of being within polarized societies of people convinced they must live must each moment of their lives according to someone else’s interpretation of it. Or: according to a script which they were trained to recite from birth without reflections or questions on how effectively it served their lives, or how effectively their lives served it. NEXT: Please Click Here for Literary Cultural Migrations and the 18th Anniversary of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance Part 2.
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Quote from Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Facts On File/Infobase Publishing): “The leaders and followers of the Harlem Renaissance were every bit as intent on using Black culture to help make the United States a more functional democracy as they were on employing Black culture to 'vindicate' Black people.” Aside from providing a platform on which to battle for the equality of African Americans, the Harlem Renaissance may also be viewed as an important experiment in diversity and multiculturalism. Whereas the principle authors of the movement were African Americans, most of them rose to national fame with the assistance of white publishers and some with the help of white patrons such as Charlotte Osgood Mason. The encyclopedia acknowledged this fact with profiles of a number of such figures, including entries on Mason, magazine publisher Max Eastman, and Carl Van Vechten. Recognition of individual sexual identity and emerging gay culture played an important role in the diverse nature of the Harlem Renaissance as well. In the article titled “Sexuality and the Harlem Renaissance,” this author observes the following: “The writers, artists, and musicians of the Harlem renaissance in their work and in their lives generally approached sexuality as an aspect of democratic freedom open to exploration and definition on one’s own terms.” (Aberjhani, Encyclopedia of HR, p. 302) Such as an observation matches very well the stated concerns and objectives of the gay marriage equality movement that has gained unprecedented momentum over the past few years. Along the same lines, ongoing debates (if they may be called such) over women’s rights to determine aspects of their physical well-being were noted in the same article: “…With American slavery less than 100 years in the past, one important message discerned from the writings of [Zora Neale] Hurston and other black women writers of the era was that their bodies now belonged to themselves rather than anyone else, white or black.” (Encyclopedia of HR, p. 302) That America still struggled with the implications of the above statement, even while the passage of controversial birth control laws demonstrated the truth of it, provided yet another reason why studies of the Harlem Renaissance continue to inform students’ understanding of issues impacting lives today. Widespread Impact The importance of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance since its initial publication has been documented in many different ways. Significant honors such as the Choice Academic Title Award, the New Jersey Notable Book of the Year Award, news magazine cover stories about it, and inclusion in ESSENCE Magazine’s Holiday Gift Guide have placed it among standard works in the field. It occupies shelves in more than a thousand libraries around the world, including the New York City’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The American University in Cairo, Egypt, Harvard Library at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, and The National Library of Australia in Canberra. It has also been added to the Bloom’s Literary Reference Online and the Facts On File African-American History Online education databases. The two co-authors and the author of the foreword identified on the cover of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (which features classic art by Jacob Lawrence) were not the only ones to contribute to the title’s completion. Among those writers who contributed an article to the book, most have gone on to pen memorable works of their own or to distinguish themselves in other ways. They include the following:
The encyclopedia made its debut during celebrations of the centennial for the publication of W.E.B. Du Bois’s classic The Souls of Black Folks and in the same year as The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois (Kensington Books, Philosophical Library Series). Aside from serving as an unprecedented documentation of a singular period in American and African-American history, the celebrated book represents a key touchstone document for the 100th Anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance Initiative. Aberjhani About AberjhaniHaving recently completed a book of creative nonfiction on his hometown of Savannah, Georgia (USA) Author-Poet Aberjhani s currently writing a full-length play about the implications of generational legacies as symbolized by efforts to rename the Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge. |
AberjhaniWinner of Choice Academic Title Award, Best History Book Award, and Notable Book of the Year Award for Encyclopedia of the Harlem Remaisssance. Archives
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