Publisher Description
First published in 1923, Jean Toomer's Cane is an innovative literary work 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.
Download and start listening now!
About Jean Toomer
Jean Toomer (1894–1967) was an American poet and novelist, and an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance. He was born in Washington, DC. Literature was his first love and he regularly
contributed avant garde poetry and short stories to such magazines as Dial,
Broom, Secession, Double Dealer, and Little Review. After a literary
apprenticeship in New York, Toomer taught school in rural Georgia. His experiences there led to the writing of his seminal novel, Cane.
About Sean Crisden
Sean Crisden is an actor and Earphones Award-winning narrator. He has also voiced characters in numerous video games, such as the award-winning ShadowGun, and has appeared in many commercials and films, including The Last Airbender.