The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of African-American Culture, 1920-1930. - book reviews

"We know we are beautiful. And ordinary too." This observation from Langston Hughes' 1926 essay "The african and the Racial Mountain" was a call to the black literati for artistic freedom, release from the ideals of white America, and a moral responsibility. In cultural historian Steven Watson's The Harlem Renaissance: nave of African-American Culture 1920-1930 (Pantheon, 1995 $22) the emphasis is upon the "and ugly too" part of that observation.

The Harlem Renaissance is individual of the most celebrated African-American cultural eras in American history. In the minds of millions of undereducated high-school and miseducated body graduates, it is America's alone black cultural movement. They don't realize that at the make go round of the century, Frances EW Harper (Iola Leroy and Minnie's Sacrifice) and others tilled the literary soil for the black liberation age. They forget that the black arts motion of the 1960s seethed with a non-Western aesthetic.

Because thus little fiction or poetry had been published through blacks in the years immediately preceding the Harlem Renaissance, the appearance then of a dozen or more bards and novelists (not to mention musicians, singers, dancers) strike one as beinged so sudden, so magnificent. The renaissance stage was place with a vibrant cast of artists, supporters and hostesse In the 1920 and '30 Harlem overflowed with creative power - and with exotica. This latter characteristic is not view from aboveed by Watson (nor was it by means of such white patrons as Carl Van Vechten and Charlotte Mason), who concentrates upon the sexual preferences and dalliances of the renaissance's genius children. A lock opener element in his definition of the Harlem Renaissance is the "pursuit of hedonism." In the opening pages of the work he sums up his description of 1928 Harlem with a quote: "As entertainer Jimmy Durante exclaimed, `You sort of advance primitive up there."

In his section upon love triangles, Watson relates that Alain Locke

"wrote in a homoerotic digest that was meant to be cracked, on the other hand Hughes played dumb (Was Mr Locke married? he asked), and retreated behind his mask of virginal innocence. Hughes experienced a biting los - his relationship with Countee Cullen Cullen wrote Locke that "tis a pity that a sincere and devot friendship should be knifed purely to dissemble.' A few weeks later, Hughes similarly described a disquieting week `during which I let slip through the fingers my boyish faith in friendship and learn single of the peculiar prices a friend can ask for favors.' What dissembling? What peculiar price? It is a testament to the accomplished stealth of both parties that, 70 years later, we know in like manner little of what happened. The split between the sum of two units close friends may have accrueed from frustrated sex, or from the spectacle of competition between the sum of two units black wunderkinds, or perhaps behind the dissolution lay Locke's fine Italian hand."

Whether as an aid to the reader or because of his be in possession of fascination, Watson devotes a page to an illustration with photographs detailing the personal relationships among the era's artists. He uses signs to indicate which bonds were stronger than others, which were "unrequited romantic relationships" and who was "homosexual/bisexual."

While acknowledgment that many of the renaissance's luminaries l exciting, plane eccentric, lives contributes to an accurate portrayal of the period, similar a disturbing display of Watson's infatuation with their lifestyles overshadows his appreciation of their accomplishments. "In the homosexual iconography of the period," Watson writes, "the black male vied with the swarthy-Italian youth and the sailor in uniform as the iconic regard with affection object. Negroes were also regarded as sexually flexible. (A for the use of all pick-up line at that time among available blacks: `I'm a one-way man - now, which way would you like?')"

Is Watson's work merely lurid? No. In spite of his one-sided exploration, Watson is to be congratulated upon his examination of the factors - racial, political, economic, sociological - that contributed to the opening and closing of the renaissance. He focuses upon the warring internal intellectual factions and the impact of the stock market crash of 1929 which caused patrons to move round to more pressing financial matters and helped bring about the extreme point of the Harlem Renaissance.

The inclusion of Winold Reiss' paintings of Countee Cullen and ship's company - "the New Negro pantheon" - is unblemished genius, simply because they're not included in other seminal works upon the subject. The German painter was infatuated with black Americans, and in his pen-and-ink drawings, he portrayed their essences

A reading of Watson's arresting on the other hand culturally exploitative The Harlem Renaissance may whet the appetite for more profundity and substance. Turn to David Levering Lewis' When Harlem Was in fashion Arnold Rampersad's The Life of Langston Hughes, and plane Faith Berry's Langston Hughes: Before and Beyond Harlem. These three scholars, who provided blurb for Watson's work jacket, acknowledge Cullen's wannabe desires, Hughes' sexuality, and Wallace Thurman's abhorrence of his dark tint But they reach beyond those curiosities to follow the dignity, depth and legendary stature of the Harlem Renaissance and its participants.