Harlem+Renaissance+-3rd

​

Nella Larsen 
in the Harlem Renaissance



=
I created my best work during the time of the Harlem Renaissance, or the New Negro Movement as my peers called it. This "movement" was the first time that my peers and I were taken seriously as writers and artists. The whole movement was due to the migration of African- Americans to the north from the rural southern states. Along with the inflow of people was an inflow of creativity. =====


=Soundtrack of the Renaissaince =

=
Muscians and singer were just as influential as the writers of the peiod.Beautiful symphonies and sonatas were written,but the music of the period is considered to be club music,mainly jazz and blues. Jazz was first played in small marching bands and by solo pianist. It gained popularity in New orleans, this created a kinda jazz style. Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong are among the greastest jazz players. The blues deals with hardships of life and lost love. Blues singer were the ones who expressed theses emotion to the audience. Bessie Smith and Bille Holiday, the greatest blues singers of all time. Both Jazz and Blues were developed in the south and moved into the north. this similar to the movement of people. The music and the club scenes became the setting of many writers and the beat behind their words. The club scene was also the place to be, that was the essence of harlem. the city was always buzzing day and n ight.=====

=Political Movements =

=
The political movements of the time centered around racial equality. I am a descendant of a West Indian father and a Danish mother. With my ethnic background I wanted to be legally seen as both black and white, but that was not the case. As African Americans ,New York was the place to be, it was the epicenter of all civil rights movement. THe main theme behind the movements was unity. The ones pushing the movement fowared were the NAACP and W.E.B Dubois. =====

=
Another movement was the Back To Africa movement. This movement was started by Marcus Garvey, its goal was to help african American get back to their roots. This inspired other writers to write poems about the motherland( Africa). It instilled a sense of pride in African-Americans. Many writers wrote poems and naraatives displaying this pride in their culture. Garvey suggested that African- Americans should move back to Africa. Although few people actually went back to Africa ,it later inspired the black power movement and Rastafarnism. =====

[|More on the Back to Africa Movement]
= = =The Writers Of The Harlem Renaissance =

=
While New York was the center of the civil rights movement, Harlem was the center of all of the creativity.Many authors emergered from this period and wrote novels that will soon become classics. Each author drew form different aspects of black culture in their writing. Sterling A. Brown drew from the rural blacks that he surrounded himself with, while I drew from my unordinary background, which has had a profound effect on my writings. =====

=
My first novel, "Quicksand" was semiautobiographical, and was based around my unfulfilled quest for an identity. The main character in this novel is a half-black, half-white female in the post Civil War era. This can easily tie back to me because I incorporated both race and sex into the main characters persona, and these two aspects of my life are what give me the most difficulty with fitting into society. =====

=
<span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">Other authors of this period are Countee Cullen, who expressed racial themes in his poetry; Jessie Redmon Fauset, another female writer. Her novels focused on interracual realtionships and the color line. Langston Hughes expression of how he views life made <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">him very popular. =====

=
<span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">There was not a defined literary style of the Renaissance, but all of the writers expressed the african american experiance in their own way. I expressed mine by showing the struggle of a person of mixed race, who does not know their exact place in society. During this time culturally, African - Americans were fighting for their place in society and to be treated as equals. This same attitude was what made the liter ature of this era so unique. =====

=
<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; text-align: left;">Poetry was huge in this period. THe emotions of all of the poets like Countee cullen and Langston Hughes gave readers an insight of the lives in the African - Americam Communities. Novel writers like myself, and Jessie Redmon Fauset displayed inner struggles and political views. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; text-align: center;"> ===== media type="custom" key="4519708" width="343" height="236" align="center"

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;"> =<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%; text-align: center;">Need More Information?: <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; text-align: center;">[|Nella Larsen Biography] [|About.com- Nella Larsen] [|Nella Larsen Photographs] [|Writers of the Harlem Renaissance] [|More On the Harlem Renaissance] [|More Harlem Renaissance]Blog About this Page <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; font-size: 80%; msospacerun: yesmsoSpacerun;"> = <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; text-align: center;">Blog about This Page and Why it should be continued to be studied.