A source of controversy upon its 1929 publication, this novel was the first to openly address color prejudice among black Americans. The author, an active member of the Harlem Renaissance, offers insightful reflections of the era's mood and spirit in an enduringly relevant examination of racial, sexual, and cultural identity.

Blacker the Berry...

Politics & Social Sciences

Thurman, Wallace

Social Sciences

Scribner Paper Fiction

The groundbreaking Harlem Renaissance novel about prejudice within the black community Emma Lou Morgan’s skin is black. So black that it’s a source of shame to her not only among the largely white community of her hometown of Boise, Idaho, but also among her lighter-skinned family and friends. Seeking a community where she will be accepted, she leaves home at age eighteen, traveling first to Los Angeles and then to New York City, where in the Harlem of the 1920s she finds a vibrant scene of nightclubs and dance halls and parties and love affairs . . . and, still, rejection by her own race. One of the most widely read and controversial works of the Harlem Renaissance, and the first novel to openly address prejudice among black Americans and the issue of colorism, The Blacker the Berry . . . is a book of undiminished power about the invidious role of skin color in American society. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,800 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Blacker the Berry . . . (Penguin Classics)

Literature & Fiction

United States

Penguin Publishing Group

Modern Library Harlem Renaissance It's 1920s Harlem, and man, the joint is jumpin'. Folks are coming and going and everything's copacetic as long as the gin keeps flowing. This is the scene Stephen Jorgenson dives into when he arrives from Canada for the first time. He is taken to "The Niggerati Manor," an apartment building in Harlem inhabited by aspiring artists whose true talents lie in living, and where everything's black and white--with a lot of grayness in between. Counterbalancing Stephen's embrace of these folks is Raymond Taylor, a writer who is the only truly talented artist in the manor. Raymond's cynical take on the "new Negro artist" is the tightrope he walks between the love and hatred of himself and his people. Characters representing Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Alain Locke all appear, and part of the fun of this book is figuring out who's who.

Infants of the Spring (Harlem Renaissance)

Modern Library

The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life

Emma Lou was born too black for her  own good  and was resented by her own family. She drifts from one loveless relationship to another in the search for her identity and place a society where prejudice comes not only from whites but from her own race.

Ams Pr Inc

Infants of the Spring

Emma Lou was born too black for her own good and was resented by her own family. She drifts from one loveless relationship to another in the search for her identity and place a society where prejudice comes not only from whites but from her own race.

The Blacker the Berry

Ayer Co. Pub

"The tragedy of her life was that she was too black," declares the narrator at the start of this powerful novel of intraracial prejudice. Emma Lou Morgan lives in a world of scorn and shame, not because her skin is black, but because it's too black. No one among her family, teachers, and friends has a word of consolation or hope for the despised and rejected girl. With nothing to lose, eighteen-year-old Emma Lou leaves her home in Idaho, seeking love and acceptance on a journey that ultimately leads her to the legendary community of the Harlem Renaissance. A source of controversy upon its 1929 publication, The Blacker the Berry was the first novel to openly address color prejudice among black Americans. Author Wallace Thurman, an active member of the Harlem Renaissance, vividly recaptures the era's mood and spirit. His portrait of a young woman adrift in the city forms an enduringly relevant reflection of the search for racial, sexual, and cultural identity.

The Blacker the Berry (Dover Literature: African American)

Dover Publications

"[T]his delightful roman à clef about the Harlem Renaissance reflects . . . many of the competing notions of its time — between the masses and individuality, between art and uplift, between civilization and primitivism, between separatism and assimilation." — Kirkus Reviews This minor classic of the Harlem Renaissance centers on the larger-than-life inhabitants of "Niggerati Manor," an apartment building modeled on the rooming house where the author once lived among other celebrated black artists and writers. Enlivened by characters based on Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Alain Locke, Wallace Thurman's rollicking novel satirizes the cultural confusion surrounding a golden age of African-American art and literature. Infants of the Spring was originally published in 1932 — shortly after the author's ground-breaking novel on interracial prejudice, The Blacker the Berry, and two years before his untimely death. Thurman's elegant prose and witty characterizations offer revealing insights into conflicts within the African-American artistic community as well as the struggle to maintain artistic integrity.

Infants of the Spring (Dover Literature: African American)

Humor & Satire

One of the most widely read and controversial works of the Harlem Renaissance, The Blacker the Berry . . . was the first novel to openly explore prejudice within the Black community. This pioneering novel found a way beyond the bondage of Blackness in American life to a new meaning in truth and beauty. Emma Lou Brown's dark complexion is a source of sorrow and humiliation -- not only to herself, but to her lighter-skinned family and friends and to the white community of Boise, Idaho, her home-town. As a young woman, Emma travels to New York's Harlem, hoping to find a safe haven in the Black Mecca of the 1920s. Wallace Thurman re-creates this legendary time and place in rich detail, describing Emma's visits to nightclubs and dance halls and house-rent parties, her sex life and her catastrophic love affairs, her dreams and her disillusions -- and the momentous decision she makes in order to survive. A lost classic of Black American literature, The Blacker the Berry . . . is a compelling portrait of the destructive depth of racial bias in this country. A new introduction by Shirlee Taylor Haizlip, author of The Sweeter the Juice, highlights the timelessness of the issues of race and skin color in America.

Blacker the Berry. . .

Touchstone

In this satire which shows the role of black writers and artists during the American Renaissance of the 1920s, Wallace Thurman proved himself to be a black writer who suffered no fools of any color, a modern satirist who, as republication here shows, was very much ahead of his time.
Thurman was a novelist, ghost writer, editor of two Harlem magazines, and a playwright. His satire, derived from close personal observation, was directed primarily at the Harlem or Negro Renaissance, which began in 1925. As John A. Williams points out in his Afterword to this new edition, Thurman and nearly everyone with artistic aspirations came to New York then, black and white; those were the merging days of the Harlem Renaissance, the Lost Generation, and the Jazz Agereally one extended explosion of American literature, and there were influences passed between the groups.” The Renaissance flourished through 1929, then faded.
Thurman’s satire came too late1932, after its main target, the Harlem Renaissance, lay shrouded in the Great Depression woe that obscured or proclaimed frivolous all but proletarian art. Yet Infants of the Spring, stillborn then, lives today. By re-creating the bohemian lives of black artists of the 1920s, Thurman corrects the assumption that one of America’s most creative decades owes its energy to whites alone.

Infants of the Spring (Lost American Fiction)

Southern Illinois University Press

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