Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919

W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919

by David Levering Lewis

This monumental biography--eight years in the research and writing--treats the early and middle phases of a long and intense career: a crucial fifty-year period that demonstrates how Du Bois changed forever the way Americans think about themselves.

The Ways of White Folks: Stories

by Langston Hughes

In these acrid and poignant stories, Hughes depicted black people colliding--sometimes humorously, more often tragically--with whites in the 1920s and '30s.

Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance

by Houston A. Baker

"Mr. Baker perceives the harlem Renaissance as a crucial moment in a movement, predating the 1920's, when Afro-Americans embraced the task of self-determination and in so doing gave forth a distinctive form of expression that still echoes in a broad spectrum of 20th-century Afro-American arts. . . . Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance may well become Afro-America's 'studying manual.'"--Tonya Bolden, New York... (more)

Within the Circle: An Anthology of African American Literary Criticism from the Harlem Renaissance to the Present

Within the Circle: An Anthology of African American Literary Criticism from the Harlem Renaissance to the Present

Within the Circle is the first anthology to present the entire spectrum of twentieth-century African American literary and cultural criticism. It begins with the Harlem Renaissance, continues through civil rights, the Black Arts Movement, and on into contemporary debates of poststructuralist and black feminist theory. Drawing on a quote from Frederick Douglass for the title of this book, Angelyn Mitchell explains... (more)

The Book of American Negro Poetry

by James Weldon Johnson

A landmark anthology of forty poets that brought serious attention to writers such as Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes. The poetry, the prefaces, and Johnson’s critical notes have made this book a classic. Indices.

Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral

by Jessie Redmon Fauset

Written in 1929 at the height of the Harlem Renaissance by one of its most prolific authors, Plum Bun is the story of Angela Murray, a young black girl from Philadelphia who discovers she can pass for white. After the death of her parents, Angela moves to New York to escape the racism she believes is her only obstacle to opportunity. What she soon discovers is that being a woman has its own burdens that don't fade... (more)

The Furious Flowering of African American Poetry

The Furious Flowering of African American Poetry

This collection of essays and six interviews, from the Furious Flower Conference of 1994, provides a mosaic of the major critical and aesthetic issues emerging from African-American poetry and its literary milieu. They address the main points for assessing the work of black poets.

Harlem GalleryMelvin Beaunorus Tolson

Harlem Gallery

by Melvin Beaunorus Tolson

The Wedding, Limited Edition

by Dorothy West, Laurey Bright

In a novel that documents the rise of the black middle class, a racially mixed wedding is about to take place on Martha's Vineyard in the 1950s--amidst extreme tension and resistance. Reprint.

The Life of Langston Hughes, 1941-1967 : I Dream a World

The Life of Langston Hughes, 1941-1967 : I Dream a World

by Arnold Rampersad

February 1, 2002 marks the 100th birthday of Langston Hughes. To commemorate the centennial of his birth, Arnold Rampersad has contributed new Afterwords to both volumes of his highly-praised biography of this most extraordinary and prolific American writer. The second volume in this masterful biography finds Hughes rooting himself in Harlem, receiving stimulation from his rich cultural surroundings. Here... (more)

Quicksand and Passing

by Nella Larsen

"Quicksand" (1928) is the first novel to give a voice to the sexual desires of a black woman. Helga Crane, the book's protagonist, is trapped in the conflict between an active and a passive sexual behaviour, between sexual fufilment and middle-class respectability. Conflicts of race and sex even a religious conversion cannot resolve. "Passing", written a year later, is overtly about black people who pass for... (more)

When Harlem Was in Vogue

by David Levering Lewis

Stretching from the close of World War I to immediately after the Depression, the Harlem Renaissance was a time of glorious artistic freedom and intellectual collaboration between black artists and white bohemians of Greenwich village. In his masterful and fascinating study of this era, Lewis takes a daring look at what was considered to be a successful utopian effort at assimilating and validating black culture... (more)

Selected poems

by Langston Hughes

The poems in this volume were chosen by Hughes himself shortly before his death in 1967 and encompass work from his entire career. His poetry launched a revolution among black writers in America.

Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten (Vintage)

Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten (Vintage)

by Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes is widely remembered as a celebrated star of the Harlem Renaissance -- a writer whose bluesy, lyrical poems and novels still have broad appeal. What's less well known about Hughes is that for much of his life he maintained a friendship with Carl Van Vechten, a flamboyant white critic, writer, and photographer whose ardent support of black artists was peerless. Despite their differences — Van... (more)

There Is Confusion (Northeastern Library of Black Literature)

There Is Confusion (Northeastern Library of Black Literature)

by Jessie Redmon Fauset

Jessie Redmon Fauset's first novel shows a prescient awareness of the black middle class's quest for social equality in the early twentieth century and of the limited vocational choices confronting both black and white American women in that era. Set in Philadelphia some 60 years ago, There Is Confusion traces the lives of Joanna Mitchell and Peter Bye, whose families must come to terms with an... (more)

The Living is Easy

by Dorothy West

One of only a handful of novels published by black women during the forties, the story of ambitious Cleo Judson is a long-time cult classic. The Living Is Easy is delightfully wry and ironic humor-even bitchiness-of the novel coexists with a challenging moral and social complexity. "A powerful work."- Essence "Dorothy West is a brisk storyteller with an eye for ironic detail...a deft stylist and writer of... (more)

Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Black Poets of the Twenties

Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Black Poets of the Twenties

by Countee Cullen

This selection from the work of thirty-eight poets was made by Countee Cullen in 1927. His stated purpose at the time was to bring together a miscellany of deeply appreciated but scattered verse. Beginning with the work of Paul Laurence Dunbar, who, though there were black poets before him, is generally credited as the first black poet to make a deep impression on the literary world, the book includes the... (more)

Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience : The Concise Desk Reference

Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience : The Concise Desk Reference

by Kwame Anthony Appiah, Henry Louis Gates

A landmark in reference publishing, Africana is an incomparable one-volume encyclopedia of the black world-a vital resource for families, students, and educators everywhere. Inspired by the dream of the late African American scholar W.E.B. Du Bois and assisted by an eminent advisory board, Harvard scholars Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Kwame Anthony Appiah have created the first scholarly encyclopedia to... (more)

Women of the Harlem Renaissance (Women of Letters)

Women of the Harlem Renaissance (Women of Letters)

by Cheryl A. Wall

"Wall's writing is lively and exuberant. She passes her enthusiasm for these writers' works on to the reader. She captures the mood of the times and follows through with the writers' evolution -- sometimes to success, other times to isolation.... Women of the Harlem Renaissance is a rare blend of thorough academic research with writing that anyone can appreciate." -- Jason Zappe, Copley News Service "By... (more)

The Big Sea: An Autobiography

by Langston Hughes

Introduction by Arnold Rampersad. Langston Hughes, born in 1902, came of age early in the 1920s. In The Big Sea he recounts those memorable years in the two great playgrounds of the decade--Harlem and Paris. In Paris he was a cook and waiter in nightclubs. He knew the musicians and dancers, the drunks and dope fiends. In Harlem he was a rising young poet--at the center of the "Harlem Renaissance." Arnold... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: new negro renaissance

W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919

by David Levering Lewis

The Ways of White Folks: Stories

by Langston Hughes

Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance

by Houston A. Baker

Within the Circle: An Anthology of African American Literary Criticism from the Harlem Renaissance to the Present

The Book of American Negro Poetry

by James Weldon Johnson

Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral

by Jessie Redmon Fauset

The Furious Flowering of African American Poetry

Harlem Gallery

by Melvin Beaunorus Tolson

The Wedding, Limited Edition

by Dorothy West, Laurey Bright

The Life of Langston Hughes, 1941-1967 : I Dream a World

by Arnold Rampersad

Quicksand and Passing

by Nella Larsen

When Harlem Was in Vogue

by David Levering Lewis

Selected poems

by Langston Hughes

Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten (Vintage)

by Langston Hughes

There Is Confusion (Northeastern Library of Black Literature)

by Jessie Redmon Fauset

The Living is Easy

by Dorothy West

Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Black Poets of the Twenties

by Countee Cullen

Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience : The Concise Desk Reference

by Kwame Anthony Appiah, Henry Louis Gates

Women of the Harlem Renaissance (Women of Letters)

by Cheryl A. Wall

The Big Sea: An Autobiography

by Langston Hughes