Jean Toomer

Poetic sketches and stories stemming from the Harlem Renaissance author's teaching experience in rural Georgia communicate his feelings about nature's beauty and man's greed and bigotry

Cane

jack

Aine Meehan

This is possibly the most beautifully poignant and lyrical book I have read.

Jesse Morley

Beautiful (in that brutal, tragic way we all love so much) and thought-provoking, up until the final story (which happens, also, to be by far the longest).

Filled with metaphors that harness the raw senses and impressions of the South with horrifying and unexpected potency. "Her mind is a pink meshbag filled with baby toes."

“A breakthrough in prose and poetical writing. . . . This book should be on all readers’ and writers’ desks and in their minds.”—Maya Angelou First published in 1923, Jean Toomer’s Cane is an innovative literary work—part drama, part poetry, part fiction—powerfully evoking black life in the South. Rich in imagery, Toomer’s impressionistic, sometimes surrealistic sketches of Southern rural and urban life are permeated by visions of smoke, sugarcane, dusk, and fire; the northern world is pictured as a harsher reality of asphalt streets. This iconic work of American literature is published with a new afterword by Rudolph Byrd of Emory University and Henry Louis Gates Jr. of Harvard University, who provide groundbreaking biographical information on Toomer, place his writing within the context of American modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, and examine his shifting claims about his own race and his pioneering critique of race as a scientific or biological concept.

Cane (New Edition)

John Balek

One of my goals for this year is to read more from the Harlem Renaissance. When I saw "Cane" on this month's listing for Noname's Book Club I decided to move it to the top of my reading list. While I have been reading a lot of books from the 1920's-1930's recently, I haven't read any Harlem Renaissance books since High School; I'm not sure Cane was the best place to reintroduce myself.

The structure of this book is a mix of poems and short vignettes. I'm not the biggest fan of poetry and found more interest in some of the more descriptive vignettes. These stories give insight into Toomer's life experiences and how he is a transient being. Toomer writes about his experiences in the south, particularly Georgia, and his time in the northern cities of DC and Chicago. He writes about his experiences being a mixed race man in white spaces and black spaces, some stories are more abstract than others. He shows how he, or someone like him, doesn't really fit in in either place and is treated as an outsider no matter where he goes.

This is a really fascinating subject matter, especially being written from the perspective of almost 100 years ago. While this concept is quite intriguing, I think it's execution was lacking. I wish I loved the entire book as much as I did my favorite sections but for as many moments of joy and intrigue there were just as many of boredom and dullness. I found the first third of the book to be my favorite, which is surprising because it featured the most poems.

Toomer is a great descriptive writers who describes environments, especially Georgia, in such an intriguing way. This is the perfect book to read in the spring or summer as it gets you in the mood to be outside. 

There are a lot of interesting aspects of this book which would make me recommend it to others. I believe it is a deserving classic of the Harlem Renaissance that should not be forgotten. It is surprisingly modern and it introduced me to a great Gil Scott Heron song that I'm surprised I wasn't aware of beforehand.

Cane

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