Further Reading
Recommended Anthologies:
Honey, Maureen, Ed. Shadowed Dreams: Women’s Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance. Second Edition, Revised and Expanded. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2006.
Maureen Honey's anthology is a standard starting point for any serious study of poetry by Black women from this period. She is mostly focused on the Harlem Renaissance, and not on the earlier period (1890-1910), so the anthology lacks figures like Frances E.W. Harper, Maggie Pogue Johnson, or Gertrude Mossell. It is organized by author, so thematic inquiry is difficult. Authors include Gwendolyn B. Bennett, Carrie Williams Clifford, Ethel Caution-Davis, Anita Scott Coleman, Mae V. Cowdery, Clarissa Scott Delany, Blanche Taylor Dickinson, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Jessie Fauset, Sarah Collins Fernandis, Sarah Lee Brown Fleming, Alice E. Furlong, Edythe Mae Gordon, Angelina Weld Grimke, Gladys May Casely Hayford, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Helene Johnson, Effie Lee Newsome, Esther Popel, Anne Spencer, Clara Ann Thompson, Lucy Ariel Williams, and a few others.
Kevin Young, Ed. African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song. Library of America, 2020.
This more recent anthology does a great job of solving the old "aesthetics vs. politics" problem and leans into politics. Writers who have sometimes been overlooked in other anthologies like Carrie Williams Clifford have entries here, as do Frances E.W. Harper, H. Cordelia Ray ("Toussaint L'Ouverture"), Josephine D. Heard ("Retrospect"), Olivia Ward Bush-Banks, Angelina Weld Grimke, Priscilla Jane Thompson ("To a Little Colored Boy"), and Elois A. Bibb (Eloise Bibb Thompson). The selections are very thoughtful and sometimes surprising. This is one that would be invaluable in the classroom -- or on the coffee table.
Robert T. Kerlin, Negro Poets and their Poems, 1923.
This early book by a white literary critic from the 1920s is in some ways a model for the anthology/critical introduction project we have been aiming for with the Reader. The book is out of copyright, so we have taken the liberty of reproducing it in its entirety on the pages of this anthology. There are chapters on Frances E.W. Harper, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Angelina W. Grimke, Anne Spencer, and Jessie Fauset. Robert Kerlin is himself a fascinating figure; notably, he was fired from a teaching position in 1921 after speaking out for Black farmers in Arkansas who had been lynched.
Ann Allen Shockley, Afro-American Women Writers 1746-1933: An Anthology and Critical Guide, 1988.
This important early anthology has rich biographical accounts of several writers who are not found anywhere else. Shockley does have a bias for prose, so this volume may be a little less useful for scholars interested in poetry. However, the bibliographic materials and the publication timelines are extremely helpful.
Joan R. Sherman, African-American Poetry of the Nineteenth Century. University of Illinois Press, 1991.
Another helpful earlier anthology, though it is overwhelmingly dominated by poets who were men. Still, there are entries for Frances E.W. Harper (who is very well-represented), H. Cordelia Ray, Josephine D. Heard, Eloise A. Bibb, and Priscilla Jane Thompson. Many of the poems also have helpful annotations offering helpful historical context.
Works of Literary Criticism
Hull, Akasha Gloria. Color, Sex & Poetry: Three Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance.. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987.
An excellent introduction to three writers in particular, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and Angelina Weld Grimke. The readings of Johnson and Grimke are especially comprehensive and insigthful. This book holds up quite well after nearly 40 years, and remains an important starting point. (Our author profile of Grimke cites Hull's book.)
Ramey, Lauri. A History of African American Poetry. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
This recent book is organized into chapters roughly structured around historical periods. Chapters Three ("Emancipation to African American modernism") and Four ("The Twentieth Century Renaissances") are particularly relevant to the current project. Chapter 3 is largely focused on Paul Laurence Dunbar, perhaps at the expense of contemporary poets who were women. Both chapters give general overviews of the historical poetry (and secondary literature) from the period in question.
Cheryl Wall. Women of the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.
This is another widely-cited, 'standard' text in literary criticism about the Harlem Renaissance. The focus is largely on fiction writers (there are chapters on Zora Neale Hurston and Nella Larsen, alongside Jessie Fauset), though the Introduction looks closely at poems by Georgia Douglas Johnson ("Wishes"), Anne Spencer ("Substitution" and "Lady, Lady"), Helene Johnson ("Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem"), Gwendolyn B. Bennett, and Jessie Fauset.
Jean Fagan Yellin and Cynthia D. Bond, The Pen is Ours: A Listing of Writings by and about African-American Women before 1919 With Secondary Bibliography to the Present. Oxford University Press, 1991.
This critical bibliography is part of the Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers. It is a book really for specialists and serious scholars of these writers. One especially helpful feature here are lists of "Writings About" each writer in their list. Yellin and Bond often have mentions of reviews of books by poets published in magazines like Christian Recorder that are today hard to track down.
Robert Fillman, "Toward and Understanding of Helene Johnson's Hybrid Modernist Poetics." CLA Journal, 61, 1-2 (September 2017).
This scholarly article by a former Lehigh graduate student is one of the best accounts of Helene Johnson's poetry out there.
Laura Vrana, "Anti-Lynching Poetry and the Poetics of Protest." In Shirley Moody-Turner, Ed. African American Literature in Transition. Cambridge University Press, 2021.
A helpful, richly contextualized essay on protest poetry focusing on one poet we have worked closely with here (Priscilla Jane Thompson), as well as two who were new to us, Katherine Davis Chapman Tillman and Lizelia Augustus Jenkins Moorer.