Gay Voices of the Harlem Renaissance (Blacks in the Diaspora)

AUTHOR: A. B. Christa Schwarz, Darlene Clark Hine, John McCluskey
PUBLISHER: Indiana University Press
LANGUAGE: English
DATE: 2003
PAGES: 224
ISBN: 0253216079

Publisher’s Description

This groundbreaking study explores the Harlem Renaissance as a literary phenomenon fundamentally shaped by same-sex-interested men. Christa Schwarz focuses on Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Richard Bruce Nugent and explores these writers’ sexually dissident or gay literary voices. The portrayals of men-loving men in these writers’ works vary significantly. Schwarz locates in the poetry of Cullen, Hughes, and McKay the employment of contemporary gay code words, deriving from the Greek discourse of homosexuality and from Walt Whitman. By contrast, Nugent–the only “out” gay Harlem Renaissance artist–portrayed men-loving men without reference to racial concepts or Whitmanesque codes. Schwarz argues for contemporary readings attuned to the complex relation between race, gender, and sexual orientation in Harlem Renaissance writing.

Library Notes

Purchased new by the library. Paperback.