{"id":57214,"date":"2019-01-04T20:14:24","date_gmt":"2019-01-04T20:14:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=57214"},"modified":"2019-01-04T20:14:24","modified_gmt":"2019-01-04T20:14:24","slug":"jean-toomers-cane-and-the-ambiguity-of-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=57214","title":{"rendered":"Jean Toomer\u2019s \u2018Cane\u2019 and the Ambiguity of Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jean Toomer\u2019s \u2018Cane\u2019 and the Ambiguity of Identity<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

NYR Daily<\/a>
\nThe New York Review of Books<\/a>
\n2018-12-28<\/p>\n

George Hutchinson<\/strong><\/a>, Newton C. Farr Professor of American Culture
\nCornell University, Ithaca, New York<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nA drawing of a sugar cane<\/a> field in South Carolina<\/a>, by Edouard Riou<\/a>, late nineteenth century
\nVeneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, Italy\/De Agostini Picture Library\/Bridgeman Images<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Jean Toomer\u2019s<\/a> Cane<\/em><\/a> was greeted in 1923 by influential critics as the brilliant beginning of a literary career. Many stressed the \u201cauthenticity\u201d of Toomer\u2019s African Americans and the lyrical voice with which he conjured them into being. His treatment of black characters contrasted starkly with both the stereotypes of earlier work by (mostly) white authors and the then current limitations of African-American problem fiction. As Montgomery Gregory<\/a> pointed out for the new black magazine Opportunity<\/em><\/a>, Toomer had avoided \u201cthe pitfalls of propaganda and moralizing on the one hand and the snares of a false and hollow race pride on the other hand.\u201d Waldo Frank<\/a> wrote, in the foreword to the book, \u201cIt is a harbinger of the South\u2019s literary maturity: of its emergence from the obsession put upon its mind by the unending racial crisis\u2014an obsession from which writers have made their indirect escape through sentimentalism, exoticism, polemic, \u2018problem\u2019 fiction, and moral melodrama. It marks the dawn of direct and unafraid creation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The unusual features and effectiveness of Cane<\/em> can be attributed to the fact that its author was in rapid transition, vocationally, geographically, socially, and intellectually, between different identities. His unsettled position derived from both a complicated personal history and the unusual cultural moment in which he emerged as an artist. Born just two years after his famous grandfather, P.B.S. Pinchback<\/a>\u2014a former governor of Louisiana<\/a> during Reconstruction<\/a>\u2014had moved from a palatial home in New Orleans<\/a> to a smaller, though fashionable, house in Washington<\/a>, Toomer never really knew the father for whom he was originally named. His mother, Nina, gave birth to him just nine months after a wedding of which her father disapproved and then found herself abandoned when Nathan Pinchback Toomer (as Jean was first named) was only a year old. Nina moved back to her autocratic father\u2019s home, on the condition that she change the boy\u2019s surname to Pinchback and his first name to anything other than Nathan (her husband\u2019s name). Eventually, the first name became Eugene, after a godfather; but friends called the boy \u201cPinchy.\u201d His mother called him Eugene Toomer and his grandparents, Eugene Pinchback. Ambiguity of identity and a strong intuition of the arbitrary nature of social labels came early to Toomer…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jean Toomer\u2019s “Cane” was greeted in 1923 by influential critics as the brilliant beginning of a literary career. Many stressed the \u201cauthenticity\u201d of Toomer\u2019s African Americans and the lyrical voice with which he conjured them into being. His treatment of black characters contrasted starkly with both the stereotypes of earlier work by (mostly) white authors and the then current limitations of African-American problem fiction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,1196,8,20],"tags":[29219,29220,3136,1996,14230,29221,7008],"class_list":["post-57214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-cane","tag-george-b-hutchinson","tag-george-hutchinson","tag-jean-toomer","tag-new-york-review-of-books","tag-nyr-daily","tag-the-new-york-review-of-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57214"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57216,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57214\/revisions\/57216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}