Plum Bun A Novel With A Moral - 1448 Words

Jessie Redmon Fausets novel, Plum Bun, is a story of African American self-hatred told through the life of the protagonist, Angela Murray and her family, who are divided by color. Plum Bun was set in the 1920s, which was a time of tremendous change in America in many areas including technology, economics, and civil rights. During that decade, people were moving from farms and rural areas into cities where they began to focus on education in the school systems and civil rights. Cities like New York became filled with men and women seeking to educate themselves, thus developing into one of the most important civil rights movements - the Harlem Renaissance, or the New Negro Movement. In this movement African Americans, for the first time,†¦show more content†¦Society in America during the era forced people to act out these beliefs which had been fostered by white society to institutionalize and insure its superiority over the African American community. As viewed by white society, from slave-era and beyond, African Americans were often considered to be savage and unscrupulous. When Fauset describes Angelas mother, Mattie, she writes about Matties previou s employer, a disreputable actress, which only hired colored servants for hers was a carelessly conducted household, and she felt dimly that all coloured people are thickly streaked with immorality (Fauset 29). Jesse Redmon Fauset herself fought against this notion of black stereotyping during a time when many African American writers were succumbing to white publisher demands that the white perceived primitive black society be represented in literature. Despite rejections and difficulties, Fauset refused to satisfy the demands of the publishing establishment. Though she knew that the power to pass judgment on her work rested with the white male literary establishment, she refused to compromise her own artistic vision (McDowell xxvii). Even within the African American community there became a hierarchy regarding degrees of blackness. Zora Neale Hurston writes, circa 1930s, an informal Glossary of Harlem Slang which portrays the black color scale as: high yaller, yaller, highShow Mor eRelatedIssues of Racial Identity during the Harlem Renaissance Essay2014 Words   |  9 Pagesthat her novel Quicksand, was based on her life. Larsen was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1891. According to Wikipedia, she lived in Denmark for a few years and attended Fisk University before settling in Harlem, where she worked as a nurse and later becoming a librarian. She published her highly successful novel Quicksand in 1928. Another popular writer of the Harlem Renaissance was Jessie Redmond Fauset. Fauset was the author of the widely popular novel Plum Bun: A Novel Without Moral, which sheRead MoreA Dark Skinned, African America Woman As Well1982 Words   |  8 Pagesrace, she would have not have experiences depression and lost her self-worth. Susan Tomlinson, a professor and director of Clinical Study at Arcadia University called â€Å"The New Nego Woman as Cultural Worker in Jessie Redmond Fauset’s Plum Bun wrote an article in 2002 talks about the juncture between gender and race during the Harlem Renaissance era. She says it’s the time from of the upcoming New Negro and the New woman, Fauset symbolizes not just one but many subliminal issues on theRead MorePassing As An Integral Part Of African American Literature2601 Words   |  11 Pages387). This Quote is from Pamela Caughie‟s article â€Å"Passing as Modernism† which defines the reason behind passing, According to Caughie passing isn t simply pretending to be white, but is way for an individual to shift the confines of identity. Novels of passing have become an integral part of African American literature, main characters of such novel’s attempt to pass as white in order to circumvent the trials and tribulations black people go through while living in a white dominated society.Read More The Harlem Renaissance: Writers Reacting To Their Political Environment3405 Words   |  14 Pages He felt that the race could benefit more by focusing on the achievements of the black middle class than on the more unseemly side of the black experience. This led to his praise of the novels of female black writer Jessie Fauset, which told of the more educated class of blacks, and his sharp criticism of novels such as Nigger Heaven and their exploration of Harlemâ⠂¬â„¢s seamy underbelly. nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Even if the concept of protest poetry was not a dominant literary form during the Harlem