Literature in the Harlem Renaissance

It has been argued that the Harlem Renaissance, or the New Negro Movement, is the defining moment in African American literature because it is the time where unknown black writers started out. The main reason that the black writers started to write was to show to people and tell me about all the hardships they went through and all the tough times still coming and still happening plus as often exploring such themes as alienation and marginality. For example the short-lived literary magazine Fire, also had a significant impact on the literary production because it represented the efforts of younger African American writers to claim their own creativity apart from older artists, as well as to establish autonomy from potential white exploiters.

[By: Victoria Vroman]



 

Works Cited

cartwright, Phil, Harlem literature, www.jcu.edu/harlem/Literature/Page_1.htm, Trudier
Harris-Lopez, “Forward” Harlem Renaissance, Volume I. Janet Witalec, project editor.
Farmington Hill, MI: Gale, 2003

Call and Response: The Riverside Anthology of the African American Literary
Tradition. Ed. Patricia Liggins Hill. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998