This day in history: Jean Toomer is born

Jean Toomer, writer and philosopher was born today, December 26, 1894. Toomer, like his parents, could easily pass for white with his heritage comprising of several European and African bloodlines.  However, understanding the importance of the plight of blacks and the need to express black life in writing so others can become informed of black life, Toomer developed a literary career in which his works are very relevant today.  His literary reputation derives almost exclusively from his lyrical novel Cane, and his eminence is further enhanced by a growing body of canon-formation scholarship that provides new perspectives on a career spanning more than three decades. Evaluating his significance is no longer difficult or problematical. He remains an enduring figure in the history and development of both the American and the African-American literary traditions.

Interested in works on Toomer? Check out the below readings.

Toomer’s personal and literary archives, including several drafts of his autobiography, are located in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Beyond Cane, Toomer’s major published works are contained in Darwin Turner, ed., The Wayward and the Seeking (1980); Robert B. Jones and Margery Toomer Latimer, eds., The Collected Poems of Jean Toomer (1988); Rudolph Byrd, ed., Essentials: Definitions and Aphorisms by Jean Toomer (1991); Frederik L. Rusch, ed., A Jean Toomer Reader: Selected Unpublished Writings (1993); and in numerous periodicals and little magazines such as Broom, Double Dealer, Liberator, Crisis, Modern Review, Chapbook, S4N, Nomad, Dial, Adelphi, Pagany, Pembroke Magazine, Little Review, Prairie, Dubuque Dial, Friends Intelligencer, and New Mexico Sentinel. The most comprehensive bibliographies are John M. Reilly, “Jean Toomer: An Annotated Checklist of Criticism,” in Resources for American Literary Study (1974), and Robert B. Jones, “Jean Toomer: An Annotated Checklist of Criticism, 1923-1993,” in Resources for American Literary Study (1994).

The standard biography of Toomer is Cynthia Kerman and Richard Eldridge, The Lives of Jean Toomer: A Hunger for Wholeness (1987). The best collections of critical essays on Toomer are Frank Durham, ed., The Merrill Studies in Cane (1971); Darwin Turner, ed., Cane: An Authoritative Text, Background, Criticism (1988); Therman B. O’Daniel, Jean Toomer: A Critical Evaluation (1988); and Robert B. Jones, ed., Critical Essays on Jean Toomer (1994). Important essays also appear in two special issues dedicated to Toomer, BANG! 2, no. 2 (1972), published by the Special Collections Library at Fisk University, and CLA Journal 17 (June 1974). The most comprehensive literary and critical assessments are Robert Bone, The Negro Novel in America (1965); Darwin Turner, In a Minor Chord (1971); Brian Benson and Mabel Dillard, Jean Toomer (1980); Nellie Y. McKay, Jean Toomer, Artist (1984); Bernard Bell, The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition (1987); Rudolph P. Byrd, Jean Toomer’s Years with Gurdjieff (1990); and Robert B. Jones, Jean Toomer and the Prison-House of Thought (1993).