Harlem Renaissance

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Published in 1930, near the end of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes's Not Without Laughter is a coming-of-age narrative about James "Sandy" Rogers, an African-American boy from the small Kansas town of Stanton. Loosely based on Hughes's own childhood in Kansas, the novel traces the challenges of African-American life in the Midwest during the years leading up to World War I. The novel opens with a cyclone that rips the porch from the house of... Read Not Without Laughter Summary

Jessie Redmon Fauset’s Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral recounts the story of a young Black woman in the 1920s who decides to pass as white. Ostensibly a coming-of-age story, the novel features a complex treatment of racial barriers and gender inequalities. While the trajectory of the novel is straightforward and relatively typical for the bildungsroman—young woman leaves home, discovers herself through a series of obstacles she must overcome, and finally learns how to... Read Plum Bun Summary

Quicksand tells the story of Helga Crane, a young woman of biracial parentage who experiences discrimination in America in the early 20th century. She and her Danish mother are deserted by her African-American father shortly after her birth. The early portion of the book portrays Helga as a young teacher at Naxos, a boarding school in the American South established for the purpose of educating young Negro children. The book relies heavily upon an increasingly... Read Quicksand Summary

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“Spunk” is a short story by Zora Neale Hurston published in 1925. Set in the rural Southern United States, “Spunk” follows the conflict that ensues when one man pursues another man’s wife. The story’s publication helped establish Hurston as a significant literary voice during the Harlem Renaissance. In 1989, George C. Wolfe adapted the story, along with content from two others by Hurston, into a play by the same name. Citations in this guide correspond... Read Spunk Summary

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The short story “Sweat” by American author Zora Neale Hurston was first published in 1926 in Fire!!, a single-issue magazine published during the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston was an anthropologist and writer whose works included many essays on anthropology and folklore focused on African American communities in the American South and the Caribbean, as well as novels and short stories. Her interest in anthropology is reflected in her creative work. For example, she often wrote dialog... Read Sweat Summary

A “large woman with a large purse that ha[s] everything in it but hammer and nails” is walking home late at night when a teenage boy runs up to her and tries to steal her purse (Paragraph 1). He loses his balance and falls, and the woman “kick[s] him right square in his blue-jeaned sitter” before hauling him to his feet (Paragraph 1). She questions why he tried to rob her before remarking that his... Read Thank You, M'am Summary

Published anonymously in 1912, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is James Weldon Johnson’s fictional memoir centered on how a talented man born to a Black mother and a white father after the Civil War became white in the early-20th century. Johnson, an important critical and artistic contributor to the Harlem Renaissance, published the novel under his own name in 1927 during the height of the movement. The novel is an important bridge between the... Read The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man Summary

The Changeling is a Jacobean tragicomedy written in collaboration between established playwrights Thomas Middleton and William Rowley. It was first performed in 1622 and published in 1653. The play is adapted from John Reynolds’s 1621 story collection titled The Triumphs of Gods Revenge Against the Crying and Execrable Sinne of Willful and Premeditated Murther.The play has two plots: a tragic main plot and a comedic subplot. Scholars believe Middleton wrote the majority of the main... Read The Changeling Summary

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In Langston Hughes’s “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” the writer presents his argument regarding the creative limitations Black Americans face. Initially published in 1926, the essay traces a short, powerful argument that relies both on Hughes’s own identity as an artist as well as his critical observations of US society. As a Black author writing in the early 20th century, Hughes uses the terms “Negro” and “black” interchangeably; this study guide exclusively uses... Read The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain Summary

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Published in 1934, The Ways of White Folks is Langston Hughes’s collection of 14 short stories focusing on race relations in the United States. With somber tales of struggle and violence, as well as moments of irony and humor, the collection addresses racism, economic disparity, and hope. This study guide quotes and obscures Hughes’s use of the n-word.Plot Summary“Cora Unashamed” tells the story of Cora Jenkins, who works as a maid for a cruel White... Read The Ways of White Folks Summary

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Gwendolyn Brooks stands among the foremost American poets of the 20th century. A master of poetic form and portraiture, she explored black life in Chicago, where she lived for the majority of her life. The poem “We Real Cool,” Brooks’s most famous work, appeared in her 1960 collection The Bean Eaters.As a fledgling writer, Brooks combined early influences from the literary era of modernism, defined by poets like Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, T.S. Eliot, and... Read We Real Cool Summary