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Zusatztext "The world does not know that a people is great until that people produces great literature and art." --James Weldon Johnson "Until The Crisis Reader! no broad collection of writings from one of America's most influential journals of opinion existed. Sondra Kathryn Wilson has remedied this amazing lacuna with her excellent edition. It will be an indispensable source from the moment of issue." --David Levering Lewis! author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography W. E. B. Du Bois "The Crisis Reader offers riches from the heyday of black America' s most significant journal. Here are all the now famous names and their now famous poems and articles! and others undeservedly unknown today. Any serious student of black literature and politics will want this volume! as will those many others who long for a look at yesterday! when black bards sang." --Julian Bond! chairman of the board! N.A.A.C.P. Informationen zum Autor Sondra Kathryn Wilson, Editor Klappentext After its start in 1910, The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races magazine became the major outlet for works by African American writers and intellectuals. In 1920, Langston Hughes's poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" was published in The Crisis and W. E. B. Du Bois, the magazine's editor, wrote about the coming "renaissance of American Negro literature," beginning what is now known as the Harlem Renaissance. The Crisis Reader is a collection of poems, short stories, plays, and essays from this great literary period and includes, in addition to four previously unpublished poems by James Weldon Johnson, work by Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Jessie Fauset, Charles Chesnutt, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Alain Locke. Gwendolyn Bennett To Usward Let us be still As ginger jars are still Upon a Chinese shelf. And let us be contained By entities of Self. . . . Not still with lethargy and sloth, But quiet with the pushing of our growth. Not self-contained with smug identity But conscious of the strength in entity. If any have a song to sing That's different from the rest, Oh let them sing Before the urgency of Youth's behest! For some of us have songs to sing Of jungle heat and fires, And some of us are solemn grown With pitiful desires, And there are those who feel the pull Of seas beneath the skies, And some there be who want to croon Of Negro lullabies. We claim no part with racial dearth; We want to sing the songs of birth! And so we stand like ginger jars Like ginger jars bound round With dust and age; Like jars of ginger we are sealed By nature's heritage. But let us break the seal of years With pungent thrusts of song, For there is joy in long-dried tears For whetted passions of a throng! "to usward" was published in may 1924. Arna Bontemps Hope Lone and dismal; hushed and dark, Upon the waves floats an empty bark. The stars go out; the raindrops fall, And through the night comes a ghostly call-- My lone and dismal life's a-float Upon the seas like an empty boat. Above the heights where the sea-gulls soar, The thunder lifts its resonant roar. Like a jagged arrow a flash is sent, That splits the clouds with a double rent. And just beyond my bark that drifts, Moonbeams steal through the kindly rifts. Dirge Oh bury my bones in the dark of the moon, In a place where the soil is bare, And none will say that I mar the clay Or the vine buds there too soon. But the worm will think me sweet somehow. As he gnaws away I'll hear him say, "I scorn the taste of white flesh now". "Hope" and "Dirge" were published in August 1924 and May 1926, respectively. The Servant In this short story, Fenton Johnson introdu...
