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Emma Lou was born black. Abandoned at birth by her father and bleached by her mother from a young age, she experiences first hand the division of color amongst the colored. Navigating a world in which she seems unwanted and is deemed undesirable, Emma must learn to love herself in the skin she’s in. Wallace Thurman’s The Blacker the Berry: A Tale of Negro Life is a timeless exploration of colorism.
List of contents
Part I: Emma LouPart II: Harlem
Part III: Alva
Part IV: Rent Party
Part V: Pyrrhic Victory
About the author
WALLACE THURMAN (1902 - 1934) was a Black novelist and figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Born in Salt Lake City, Thurman was a lifelong reader and writer who completed his first novel at ten and read the likes of Shakespeare, Havelock Ellis, and Charles Baudeliare. Moving to Harlem at the height of the Renaissance, Thurman had his hand in multiple literary productions such as
The Messenger,
World Tomorrow, and
Fire!!!. A strong critic of the New Negro movement, Thurman found himself a part of the “Niggerati”—a group of Black artists and intellectuals who wanted to use their art to showcase African-American life as it authentically was whether good or bad—firmly against appealing to the Black middle class or the white gaze. Becoming one of the first Black readers at a major New York publishing house and experiencing prejudice on both sides of the color line, he felt moved to write
The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life and three years later,
Infants of Spring. Said by Langston Hughes to be, "...a strangely brilliant black boy, who had read everything and whose critical mind could find something wrong with everything he read,” Thurman was a complex and important voice in the Harlem Renaissance.
Summary
“A Black boy could get along but a Black girl would never know anything but sorrow and disappointment.” Mirroring Nella Larsen’s Passing, The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life is the fantastic debut of Wallace Thurman.Emma Lou was born black. Abandoned by her father at birth, she is subject to skin bleaching by her mother who hopes to make the child more desirable. Learning that she is unwanted in white society but also ostracized within her own, Emma Lou navigates a harsh and unrelenting world as she tries to come to terms with her life and love herself in the skin she’s in.Professionally typeset with a beautifully designed cover, this edition of The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life is a reimaging of a Harlem Renaissance staple for the modern reader.
Foreword
ONLINE: will feature on Mint Editions social media pages and blog during publication month (August) as well as during Black History Month (February) and Pride Month (June)
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