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Diversity and Harlem Renaissance - Coggle Diagram
Diversity and Harlem Renaissance
Pluralizations
contexts
mass immigration
late 19t/early 20th century
nationalist sentiments
in the wake of WWI and
xenophobic sentiments
in 1920s
melting pot
not with a "positive" connotation
-> early concepts of cultural pluralism
countered the melting pot
Randolph S. Bourne (1886-1918): esp. "Trans-national America" (1916)
old elite immigrants vs. new immigrants
obvious contrast
Born describes the dominant English Americans and their conseratism as the chief obstacle to social advance
For English Americans, Americanizing means cultural homogenizing and Anglo-Saxony
-> tasteless, colorless, uniform, cheap cultural reckage
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Still displays a very strong America-centrism and exceptionalist traits
Redefinitions of America
-> Growing body of ethic and immigrant literature
Horace M. Kallen (1882-1974)
German-Jewish background
1924 > term
cultural pluralism
He rejects the idea of the melting pot and ethnocentric ideas of the Anglo Americans/their singularity/elimination of all differences for the sake of Anglo-Americans
Cullen rejects undo-assimilation
"Men can change their clothes, their politics, their wives, their religions, their philosophies to a greater or lesser extent
but they can not change their grandfathers
pluralistic and transnational terms, democracy fosters perfection and conservation of differences
American People described as a Mosaik of peoples
Symphony and orchestration
Creates a harmonious, beautiful symphony
He was "progressive"
American exceptionalism
ethnicity exists, is not constructed, people are inherently different (problematic to a certain degree)
>> ethnic writing and/as modernism
Native American
Zitkála-Sa [Gertrude Simmons Bonnin] (1876-1938)
Impressions of an Indian Childhood
"There is what the paleface has done!"
Asian American
Mexican American
Jewish American
Mary Antin
Promised Land(1912)
"Into my hands is given all her priceless heritage"
Harlem Renaissance
Focus Point: The Harlem Renaissance
African American literature and culture WWI - WWII
Harlem turned black after 1914
Most theaters, writers cafes and music clubs were located in Harlem, the Harlem Renaissance has its center in Harlem
Jazz Rooms, Partys, Speak-easy, nightclubs, glamour, excitement, activity and energy
overcrowding
poverty
segregation
discrimination
deterioration of public health
high enfant mortality
Large-Scale White Patronage
White Patrons support Black Artists and Writers oftentimes financially so they can afford writing
This way they oftentimes try to have an influence and to determine what black artists do/say/write
rebirth and flowering of African American culture in the wake of a great migration, of blacks from the rural south to north in cities, in the first 2 decades of the 20th century
There has been African American Culture before, but it has been suppressed in the back then circumstances
Starting Point ? End Point ?
controversial
The Harlem Renaissance had its mayor flowering in the 1920s
The Harlem Renaissance makes clear, that Black Art is also American Art, Literature and Cultural Expression
Representatives
Booker T. Washington
firstly Accommodation
firstly agricultural/industrial training
equality would come step by step
For the time being he accepts being separate from Whites
W.E.B. Du Bois
demanded the right to vote
equality
education of youth in all sectors according to ability
demands more cooperation from Whites
demands work culture and liberty
different styles
programmatic ideas - central statement
Alain Locke
The New Negro(1925)
introduces the survey graphic issue
a magazine that collected writings and images by Harlem Renaissance Artists
so successful that they turned it into a larger book edited by Alain Locke
1925 also The Great Gatsby
programmatic ideas
-> see esp. centerpiece of The New Negro (1925) > Alain Locke's essay
transition from "old" to "new Negro"
vibrant with a new psychology and demands active participation in American culture, social life, democracy and politics
self respect and racial pride
African Heritage in a sense of cultural emancipation becomes a source of pride, a source of racial solidarity and cultural and literary production
focuses on folk art as equal and important art
racial unity and self dependence
being able to create your own life and deserving to have self dependence
rejection of Accommodation
wanting full participation that you deserve of realising that you deserve full equality (immediately)
African Americans = human beings
turn to the inner life
African Americans for so long could not focus on being human beings with emotions, with a psychology, with feelings, because they had to focus so much on outward conditions
Human beings are human beings, with their positive traits and with their just human shortcomings
The Harlem Renaissance was basically a state of mind/attitude shared by a number of black writers and intellectuals who centered their activities around Harlem in the late 1920s and early 1930s
shared little but a consciousness that they were part of a new Awakening of Black Culture in the United states
no common bond of political or racial ideology that united the various elements in the Renaissance
Sense of Community, Feeling that they were all part of the same endeavour
common notions
An affirmation of a new ethnic self-confidence of race-pride
an affirmation of the African heritage as an important part of African American culture
An Affirmation of the African Heritage as not inferior of White culture
rejection of older, oppressive stereotypes
share a propagation of new and positive self-images
African Americans are not a problem in society, they are Americans, they are human beings
Issues
Reality of Life
Patronage
Racism, exoticism
political plays
historical pageants, e.g.
melodrama, e.g.
NAACP, campaign against lynching
Angelina Weld Grimké, "Rachel" (1916)
hard studying black children who believe in American values
Mother reveals the secret of their fathers way of dying, he way lynched because he wrote a series of critical newspaper articles
children react with shock and despair
both doubt their future because of racism
at the end of her play the daughter decides that she will not give birth to any children because of that
modernist traits
the reaction to the time
particular African American political impetus
political one-act plays/folk sketches, e.g.
fiction and novels
Three different forms of writing
Jean Toomer, Cane(1923)
Very modernist perspective
Nella Larsen, Quicksand/Passing(1928/1929)
At the center of both novels is passing, the possibility of light skinned African Americans to pass for White/to be accepted by White society although they are culturally black
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
anthropological fiction
one of the possible end points and climaxes of Harlem Renaissance
fulfils a Black aesthetic in 3 aspects
only concentrates on black culture and folk materials
language
uses black English
technique
exclusively dedicated to a black perspective
African American folk novel
studies a black community from an anthropological perspective
central feminist text of the Harlem Renaissance
examples
Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker(2020) based on
On her Ground
A' Lelia Bundles
discusses experience of racism, gender, feminism
discusses the story of a self-made woman
was also an activist who tried to promote a feminist and African American cause
turning into a successful business-woman
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020)
Blues singer Ma Rainey
The "mother of blues"
Based on play by August Wilson (1982)
black fashion
black style