"Negro life in Harlem." Cf. Hanna, A. Mirror for the nation

Few contemporary writers share the remarkable talent of Terence E.Jackson. - A talent for telling a story with brightly -lit realism, for depicting characters with extraordinary sharpness and insight, and for inciting his readers to agree or disagree with his viewpoint. Mr. Jackson has indeed done what many of his peers have failed to do. That is restore the African-American novel to it's rightful place. Like a bullet being fired from a gun, Nigger's Heaven grabs hold from the first page and never lets go. Nigger's Heaven is a story all readers will want to know and that none will ever forget.

Wallace Thurman (1902-1934) played a pivotal role in creating and defining the Harlem Renaissance. Thurman's complicated life as a black writer is described here for the first time: from his birth in Salt Lake City, Utah; through his quixotic and spotty education; to his arrival and residence in New York City at the height of the New Negro Movement in Harlem. Seen as it often is through the life of Langston Hughes, the Harlem Renaissance is celebrated as a highly successful Afro-centrist achievement. Seen from Thurman's perspective, as set against the historical and cultural background of the Jazz Age, the accomplishments of the Harlem Renaissance appear more qualified and more equivocal. In Thurman's view the Harlem Renaissance's failure to live up to its initial promise resulted from an ideological underpinning which was overwhelmingly concerned with race. He felt that the movement's self-consciousness and faddism compromised the aesthetic standards of many of its writers and artists, including his own.

This 2007 Companion is a comprehensive guide to the key authors and works of the African American literary movement.