In this satire which shows the role of black writers and artists during the American Renaissance of the 1920s, Wallace Thurman proved himself to be a black writer who suffered no fools of any color, a modern satirist who, as re publication here shows, was very much ahead of his time. Thurman was a novelist, ghost writer, editor of two Harlem magazines, and a playwright. His satire, derived from close personal observation, was directed primarily at the Harlem or Negro Re naissance, which began in 1925. As John A. ...
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In this satire which shows the role of black writers and artists during the American Renaissance of the 1920s, Wallace Thurman proved himself to be a black writer who suffered no fools of any color, a modern satirist who, as re publication here shows, was very much ahead of his time. Thurman was a novelist, ghost writer, editor of two Harlem magazines, and a playwright. His satire, derived from close personal observation, was directed primarily at the Harlem or Negro Re naissance, which began in 1925. As John A. Williams points out in his Afterword to this new edition, Thurman and "nearly everyone with artistic as pirations came to New York then, black and white; those were the merging days of the Harlem Renaissance, the Lost Generation, and the Jazz Age--really one extended explosion of American lit erature, and there were influences passed between the groups." The Renaissance flourished through 1929, then faded. Thurman's satire came too late--1932, after its main target, the Harlem Renaissance, lay shrouded in the Great Depression woe that obscured or proclaimed frivolous all but proletarian art. Yet Infants of the Spring, stillborn then, lives today. By re-creating the bohemian lives of black artists of the 1920s, Thur man corrects the assumption that one of America's most creative decades owes its energy to whites alone.
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Seller's Description:
Very Good + in very good + jacket. 8vo. [2], 308, [4] pp. Bound in full gray cloth, title in silver on spine, in illustrated dust jacket. Published as part of Southern Illinois University Press' Lost American Fiction series. A list of other titles in this series appears at the end. Very Good+, minor age-toning to pages, otherwise clean and tight, light rubbing and wear to extremities of binding, in Very Good price-clipped dust jacket, with some chipping, rubbing and wear to extremities, minor overall age-toning. Nice copy.