A FEW WORDS ABOUT WORDS
BOOKSMART
By ADELE NEWSON-HORST
First published 1923 , “ Cane ,” by Jean Toomer , is a collection of short stories , vignettes , and poetry largely centered around the life of Southern Blacks , during a tumultuous time in American history .
Toomer ’ s work was inspired by what he experienced while working as a teacher at a school for Blacks in George just after the turn of the 20 th Century . Divided into three sections , his stories are rendered in marvelous poetic prose . Stories such as “ Karintha ,” “ Carma ,” and “ Esther ,” for example explore the complexities of Southern Black womanhood .
The character Karintha carries “ beauty , perfect as dusk when the sun goes down ,” Toomer writes . Carma , as strong as any man , “ does not sing ; her body is a song ” he says of another . And then he writes of Easter that she looks White , develops an all-consuming passion for the vagrant preacher Barlo who , in her imagination , is the “ best cotton picker … best man with his fists , best man with dice , with a razor . Promoter of church benefits . Of colored fairs ”
Esther , Toomer tells readers , is in awe of Barlo ’ s ability to conjure religious trances . But when he turns up drunk , she realizes he is , after all , a man with feet of clay . These stories and others in the collection paint complicated images of Black womanhood .
In Toomer ’ s book , poems are interspersed between stories and vignettes . Poems such as “ Reapers ” and “ Cotton Song ” remind readers of the heavy labor burden placed on Blacks in the South . In both his poetry and prose , Toomer reminds readers of the South ’ s dependence on Blacks for the region ’ s infrastructure – and of the region ’ s use of chain gangs to get Blacks to perform forced labor after the abolition of slavery .
In part two of Toomer ’ s book , the scene shifts to the North , to Washington , D . C . Toomer grew up in a well-to-do family in D . C . Even here Blacks and labor are intricately connected . The story “ Box Seats ” renders a portrait of the complicated life of character Dan Moore . He is told “ to work more and think less . That ’ s the best way to get along ” This story deftly displays living in the in between . Toomer has been described as “ racially indeterminate ,” rejecting the Black-White binary .
Part three reads as an autobiographicinspired account of Toomer ’ s experiences in the South . The title character , Kabnis , is mix-raced as are his friends who practice various vocations . Classism and colorism arise in his interactions with other Blacks . What ’ s clear here is Kabnis ’ ( read as Toomer ) ambivalence or struggle to come to terms with stereotypes as well as his own feelings of being Black . Additionally , with the threat of racial violence , the story captures the zeitgeist of the era with the terror of a Black pregnant woman who is lynched for hiding “ her man .”
Celebrated as a major achievement , “ Cane ” is situated in both the Harlem Renaissance and modernist traditions . •
Dr . Adele Newson-Horst is a professor and interim chair of the Department of English and Language Arts at Morgan State University .
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