Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance
A Portrait in Black and White
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Carl Van Vechten was a white man with a passion for blackness who played a crucial role in helping the Harlem Renaissance, a black movement, come to understand itself. Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance is grounded in the dramas occasioned by the Harlem Renaissance, as it is called today, or New Negro Renaissance, as it was called in the 192s, when it first came into being. Emily Bernard focuses on writing—the black and white of things—the articles, fiction, essays, and letters that Carl Van Vechten wrote to black people and about black culture, and the writing of the black people who wrote to and about him. Above all, she is interested in the interpersonal exchanges that inspired the writing, which are ultimately far more significant than the public records would suggest.
This book is a partial biography of a once controversial figure. It is not a comprehensive history of an entire life, but rather a chronicle of one of his lives, his black life, which began in his boyhood and thrived until his death. The narrative at the core of Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance is not an attempt to answer the question of whether Van Vechten was good or bad for black people, or whether or not he hurt or helped black creative expression during the Harlem Renaissance. As Bernard writes, the book instead ̶enlarges that question into something much richer and more nuanced: a tale about the messy realities of race, and the complicated tangle of black and white.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bernard's landmark study of Carl Van Vechten is by no means a complete portrait; rather, it is "a chronicle of one of his lives, his black life." Van Vechten was a "white man with a passion for blackness," who helped to facilitate the cultural regeneration of Harlem in the 1920s what we know now as the Harlem Renaissance, but what was referred to then as the New Negro Renaissance. Van Vechten's social standing broke down barriers for African-American artists and writers such as Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston despite the contested integrity of his actions (he was often criticized for whitening the artistic output of "the black mecca"). In an attempt to "celebrate Harlem" (and perhaps himself), Van Vechten ever the exhibitionist penned the obviously controversial 1926 novel Nigger Heaven, using the shocking title to draw attention to the book and the vibrant portion of uptown Manhattan that he loved, and to proclaim his insider-status amongst African-Americans. While Bernard examines these ambitious pursuits thoroughly and incisively, there is no pretense of crafting a definitive answer as to whether Van Vechten helped or hindered the lives of those that he influenced; Bernard confesses to merely stoking the fires of discussion and remembrance, telling a rich and dramatic story that explores the "complicated tangle of black and white," as well as the proclivities of a provocative and inarguably significant player in one of America's most creative movements.
