About the Author
Dr. Cary De Cordova Wintz is a Professor of History at Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas and former Chair of the Department of History, Geography and Economics there. He has been working and writing on the Harlem Renaissance for more than 40 years. . He is the author of the well-reviewed Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance (Rice University Press, 1988, reprint Texas A&M University Press, 1992, 1998) and The Harlem Renaissance 1920-1940: Interpretation of an African American Literary Movement (Garland Publishing, 1996),and The Harlem Renaissance: A History and an Anthology (Brandywine Press, 2003). He also co-edited The Encyclopedia of Harlem Renissance (Routledge, 2004) He lives in Houston, Texas.
Hear the author (interviews begin February 1):
-WBEZ-FM’s Eight Forty-Eight (Chicago – NPR)
-PRI’s The Tavis Smiley Show (national)
-NPR’s The Book Show (national)
-WDET-FM with correspondent Celeste Headlee (Detroit – NPR)
-NPR’s News & Notes (national)
-Oregon Public Radio’s Profiles and Conversations with Maggi White
-Marfa Public Radio’s Talk at Ten (Western Texas)
-America Urban Radio Network (national)
-KAXE-FM (Minnesota - NPR)
-WDCM-FM’s The Good Morning Show with -Gary and Friends (Columbus & Cleveland)
-AM 1320 Air America (Sacramento)
-KAIR-FM’s The Morning Show with Jason and Brian (Kansas City)
-WXKS-AM’s Minority Counterpoint (Baltimore)
-KBOO-FM with book reviewer Ed Golberg (Portland)
-WCBQ-FM’s The Alvin Augustus Jones Live (Raleigh)
-WDUN-FM’s The Bill & Joel Show (Atlanta)
-WICN-FM’s The Public Eye (Massachusetts – NPR)
-WEAA-FM’s The Morning Journey (Baltimore)
Hear a Sample from Harlem Speaks:
A montage of Harlem renaissance voices, including WEB DuBois and Langston Hughes, over music from the era from James Reese Europe and Charlie Johnson.
Track 1 - Introduction (mp3)
Praise for Harlem Speaks:
The book contains references to the accompanying CD, which offers 60 minutes of music, poetry, interviews, performances, and speeches, giving voice to the vibrant life of Harlem. Photographs, drawings, book covers, and posters add to the richness of this collection. A fabulous resource on the Harlem Renaissance.”
— Booklist (2/1/07)
“One advantage this work has over its competitors is that it includes a CD featuring speeches, poetry, music, never-before-released interviews, and radio broadcasts; another is its price, a real bargain… Recommended for public and academic libraries.”
— Library Journal (1/1/07)
“The writing is consistently clear and engaging, supplying plentiful detail and easily understandable analyses of intriguing innovators in a uniquely exciting and volatile place and time. Individual audio tracks, cued in the text by “Audio Callout,” include music, literary readings, interviews, and radio broadcasts. This primary-source material adds powerful and immediate impact and creates the “Living History” of the subtitle.”
— School Library Journal (11/1/06) |
About the Book
For the first time, the stories, works, lives and voices of this spectacular era come together. Harlem Speaks: A Living History of the Harlem Renaissance showcases the lives and works of the artists, writers and intellectuals behind the stunning outburst of African American culture in the three decades after World War I.
In the tradition of the New York Times bestseller Poetry Speaks, the book combines each subject’s key works with biographical and critical essays by leading Harlem Renaissance authority Cary Wintz and other experts. The integrated audio CD features music, poetry and literary readings, interviews, radio broadcasts, discussions and speeches, bringing the Harlem of legend to vibrant life once again.
Twenty-three well-known experts depict the lives of the most important African Americans who contributed to the flowering of the Harlem Renaissance. They examine the careers and contributions of Harlem Renaissance writers and poets, critics and political leaders, artists, performers, and musicians. Each focuses on the relationship of the subject to the Harlem Renaissance and to the development and expression of African American culture in the three decades that followed World War I.
SECTIONS
- Harlem and the Harlem Renaissance
- To Make A Poet Black: Literature of the Harlem Renaissance
- The Jazz Age: Music and Musicians of the Harlem Renaissance
- Art and Image in the Harlem Renaissance: The Visual and Performing Arts
- Art and Politics: The Renaissance Men of the Harlem Renaissance
- The New Negro: Politics and Criticism in the Harlem Renaissance
Cary Wintz provides essays describing Harlem during the Renaissance, and the Renaissance itself. Also includes selected readings on each topic to serve readers who want more in-depth information.
ON THE CD
Hear 120 minutes of sound recordings of the music, poetry and literary readings, poems translated into song, interviews, radio broadcasts, discussions, and speeches of the Harlem Renaissance. Also includes a series of interviews conducted by David Levering Lewis, two-time Pulitzer Prize winning author of the W.E.B. Du Bois biographies, and recorded voices from the Harlem Renaissance.
Hear, see and read the best of:
Langston Hughes • Claude McKay • Zora Neale Hurston • Richard Wright • Duke Ellington • Ethel Waters • Josephine Baker • Marcus Garvey • Alain Locke • and more
Find out interesting facts & stories, such as:
- Though the Harlem Renaissance was centered in Harlem (people flocked there during this time), this is not a NYC story, but instead a national movement.
- In the 70’s the Harlem Renaissance was criticized by black scholars who thought it to be a movement dominated by whites.
- The people involved early on had grandparents or parents who were slaves (this was only about 55 years after end of slavery).
- This was the first time you had a literary phase among blacks – it was the first real literate generation.
- The unheralded characters – UB Blake, Claude McKay, Rudolph Fisher, Josephine Baker, Wallace Thurman, Phillip Randolph, and others.
Evocative and encompassing, Harlem Speaks places you at the zenith of this vital cultural movement. |
