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An Archive for Virtual Harlem

Jessica Johnston, Author

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Writer Jean Toomer



Jean Toomer (1894-1967) poet, playwright, philosopher, and novelist. Toomer was born in Washington D.C. to mixed race parents. His father left the family when he was one year old, leaving him to be raised by his mother and grandfather, who was the first African American governor in the United States. He attended University of Chicago, New York University, and City College in New York but never received a degree. Jean was light skinned and passed for a white man at certain times, however, he grew up in black communities and attended both all-white and all-black schools. Toomer resisted being classified as white or black and preferred to be identified as simply American. In 1921, Toomer worked as a school principal in Sparta, Georgia. The location inspired him to write Cane (1923), a novel that uses a mix of poems and stories to address the realities and emotions of the African-American experience. The book—considered a masterpiece—became an emblem and harbinger of the Harlem Renaissance, and is also considered an example of modernist literature.

Tell Me

Tell me, dear beauty of the dusk,
When purple ribbons bind the hill,
Do dreams your secret wish fulfill,
Do prayers, like kernels from the husk
Come from your lips? Tell me if when
The mountains loom at night, giant shades
Of softer shadow, swift like blades
Of grass seeds come to flower. Then
Tell me if the night winds bend
Them towards me, if the Shenandoah
As it ripples past your shore,
Catches the soul of what you send. 



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