A01=George Hutchinson
African American Studies
Alfred Stieglitz
American Literature
Author_George Hutchinson
Black Biography
Black Lives
Black Writers
Cane
Category=DNB
Category=DNBL
Category=DS
Category=JBSL1
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
forthcoming
G.I. Gurdjieff
Georgia O'Keeffe
Harlem Renaissance
Marjorie Latimer
Sherwood Anderson
Twentieth Century Writers
zora neale hurston
Product details
- ISBN 9780300267730
- Dimensions: 156 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 10 Nov 2026
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
A critical biography of Harlem Renaissance writer Jean Toomer and his lifelong struggle to transcend race, by an award-winning author
The poet and novelist Jean Toomer (1894–1967) was among the most influential figures of the Harlem Renaissance, inspiring generations of Black writers with his 1923 modernist masterwork Cane. Yet his mission was to awaken Americans to the formation of a new “American” race that would supersede the “old” racial categories. Award-winning biographer George Hutchinson reveals how Toomer’s racial theory shaped both his literary genius and his personal struggles.
Born into the Black elite in Washington, D.C., Toomer was highly sensitive to the color line and able to move across it. Toomer engaged in a lifelong struggle to be released from this system, reinventing himself racially, spiritually, and artistically not as a Black man but as a “superman.” From his early attraction to physical culture through his search for Cosmic Consciousness, Toomer aspired to shape a new modern sensibility alongside his bohemian contemporaries Georgia O’Keeffe, Alfred Stieglitz, Langston Hughes, and Nella Larsen. Yet his refusal to identify as Black, in tandem with his messianic calling, came at the cost of his literary career and the women who loved him.
Hutchinson shows how the tortures of American racism shaped Toomer’s life—and how the struggle to birth a new “American” identity marks his art.
The poet and novelist Jean Toomer (1894–1967) was among the most influential figures of the Harlem Renaissance, inspiring generations of Black writers with his 1923 modernist masterwork Cane. Yet his mission was to awaken Americans to the formation of a new “American” race that would supersede the “old” racial categories. Award-winning biographer George Hutchinson reveals how Toomer’s racial theory shaped both his literary genius and his personal struggles.
Born into the Black elite in Washington, D.C., Toomer was highly sensitive to the color line and able to move across it. Toomer engaged in a lifelong struggle to be released from this system, reinventing himself racially, spiritually, and artistically not as a Black man but as a “superman.” From his early attraction to physical culture through his search for Cosmic Consciousness, Toomer aspired to shape a new modern sensibility alongside his bohemian contemporaries Georgia O’Keeffe, Alfred Stieglitz, Langston Hughes, and Nella Larsen. Yet his refusal to identify as Black, in tandem with his messianic calling, came at the cost of his literary career and the women who loved him.
Hutchinson shows how the tortures of American racism shaped Toomer’s life—and how the struggle to birth a new “American” identity marks his art.
George Hutchinson is the Newton C. Farr Professor of American Culture and the George Reed Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at Cornell University. He is the award-winning author of several books, including In Search of Nella Larsen: A Biography of the Color Line and the Pulitzer Prize–nominated The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White. He is editor of the Penguin Classics edition of Jean Toomer’s Cane. Hutchinson lives in Trumansburg, NY.
