Born in Washington, D.C. in 1894 to Nathan Toomer and Nina Pinchback, Toomer spent his formative years oscillating between all-black and all-white schools: an experience that informed his resistance to any particular, racial background. His maternal grandfather, P.B.S. Pinchback was the first African American governor of Louisiana; however Toomer himself preferred to think of himself and his lineage, merely as American.
During his young adulthood between 1914 and 1917, Toomer attended several institutions of higher learning, in which he studied physical fitness, social science, and history, but he never attained a degree. Following his education, Toomer went on to publish short stories. But it was his experience as a Georgia school principal that would help to shape his attitudes on race, and prompt him to identify himself as an African American. His 1923 publication, Cane was heralded as one of the most important novels of the Harlem Renaissance--and of the Lost Generation: those artists and writers that included Hemingway, H.D., Gertrude Stein, and others, who had become disillusioned by the materialism and changing ideals of the modern world. To be sure, Cane is considered by many to be an early Modernist text: one that expresses the Modernist tendencies toward individualism; an acute interest in the workings of the mind and memory; and exploration of literary form. Following the popularity of his first--and ultimately only--work of fiction, Toomer disappeared into obscurity. He himself had become disillusioned by the literary world, and retreated to spiritual matters, becoming a member of the Society of Friends, and studying eastern philosophies. Toomer died in 1967 after a long period of illness.
Toomer's Women in Cane
In her essay, "In Search of Our Mother's Gardens," Alice Walker commented on the "crazy, loony saints" of Jean Toomer's groundbreaking Renaissance novel, Cane. From the too-soon ripened sexuality of Karintha, to Becky's frightening and rather pitiful specter, to Fern's laconic mystery, Toomer captured African American women at the inception of a new era of sexual freedom, yet they still bore the legacy of the unique positioning that slavery and its aftermath wrought upon them. Notions of the inherent looseness of the African American woman lingered into the twentieth century, and shadowed characters such as Karintha. The listless indifference countenanced by Fern speaks to a history of exploitation and misuse. Nevertheless, beneath the burdened frames and sad histories of these women, the author captures and enduring beauty and wisdom of these persecuted 'saints.'
Considered the first novel of the Harlem Renaissance, Jean Toomer's Cane has been considered an early form of "Modernism": a style later adopted by Richard Wright in the years following the Renaissance. Modernist writers chose to examine the workings of the mind and memory through stream-of-consciousness writing, explorations of form and experimentation through genre. The "novel" began to assume different shape and nature. Toomer's text explores the forms of poetry and short story, often with a remote and unnamed speaker describing in elliptical fashion the goings-on of the narrative as if he does so from a distance. How does Toomer's experimental style and narrative voice lend itself to your understanding and appreciation for the women he describes? Who are they? What are they like? And what does it mean that Fern conjured the strains of a Jewish cantor for her admiring narrator?
Toomer's Women in Cane
In her essay, "In Search of Our Mother's Gardens," Alice Walker commented on the "crazy, loony saints" of Jean Toomer's groundbreaking Renaissance novel, Cane. From the too-soon ripened sexuality of Karintha, to Becky's frightening and rather pitiful specter, to Fern's laconic mystery, Toomer captured African American women at the inception of a new era of sexual freedom, yet they still bore the legacy of the unique positioning that slavery and its aftermath wrought upon them. Notions of the inherent looseness of the African American woman lingered into the twentieth century, and shadowed characters such as Karintha. The listless indifference countenanced by Fern speaks to a history of exploitation and misuse. Nevertheless, beneath the burdened frames and sad histories of these women, the author captures and enduring beauty and wisdom of these persecuted 'saints.'
Considered the first novel of the Harlem Renaissance, Jean Toomer's Cane has been considered an early form of "Modernism": a style later adopted by Richard Wright in the years following the Renaissance. Modernist writers chose to examine the workings of the mind and memory through stream-of-consciousness writing, explorations of form and experimentation through genre. The "novel" began to assume different shape and nature. Toomer's text explores the forms of poetry and short story, often with a remote and unnamed speaker describing in elliptical fashion the goings-on of the narrative as if he does so from a distance. How does Toomer's experimental style and narrative voice lend itself to your understanding and appreciation for the women he describes? Who are they? What are they like? And what does it mean that Fern conjured the strains of a Jewish cantor for her admiring narrator?
