Jean Toomer Biography Essay

denim Toomer was born as Nathan Eugene Pinchback Toomer on December 26, 1884 in Washington, D.C. His father was a wealthy farmer, who was originally born into slavery in Georgia. Nina Pinchback was also of conglomerate descent. Jeans father abandoned his family when he son was an infant, so he and his mother lived with her parents. As a child in Washington, Toomer tended to(p) all- dark-skinned schools. aft(prenominal) his mother remarried, they moved to New Rochelle, New York, and he go to an all-white school. After his mothers death, Jean returned to Washington to live with his grandparents. He graduated from an academic black high school. By his early big(p) years, he refused to be segregated and wanted to be identified totally as an American.Between 1914 and 1917 Jean Toomer attended the University of Wisconsin, the Massachusetts College of Agriculture, the American College of visible Training in Chicago, the University of Chicago, New York University, and the City College of New York. He majored in agriculture, fitness, biology, sociology, and history but he never completed a degree.After leaving college, Jean published some short stories and continued composition aft(prenominal) World War I. In 1923, Toomer returned to New York where he became friends with Waldo Frank, who became his teach and editor on his refreshing Cane. In 1923, he published the novel Cane, in which he used material inspired by his m in Georgia. Below is an excerpt from his novel, Cane.whisper of jaundiced globesgleaming on lamp posts that swaylike bootleg licker drinkers in the fogand let your breathing space be moist against melike bright beads on yellow globestelephone the power-housethat the main wires are insulate(her words play up and d experiencedewy corridors of billboards)then with your tongue remove the tapeand fight down your lips to minetill they are incandescentReadingWoman.com states, Cane is one of the flora of fiction that announced the arrival of the Ha rlem Renaissance. Though a slim volume, this solicitation of sketches, stories and poems makes up a dense and powerful book. Through vivid resourcefulness and authentic dialects, Jean Toomer realistically portrays the lives and experiences of African-Americans, from the Southern peasant to the urban black in the North. Neither glorified nor stereotyped, Toomers characters speak in their own voices and are completely themselves, their behavior reflecting the truth about who and what they are. Cane compels the endorser to feel its power on a physical level. At the quantify the book was published, and still today, these full, rich characters and images lead us to a great understanding of the human condition. He stopped writing literary whole shebang in 1950. Jean Toomer died on March 30, 1967 in Doylestown, PA after years of poor health.Works CitedJean Toomer ENotes.com Reference. Enotes.com. Enotes.com. Web. 02 Apr. 2012. .Writers of the Harlem Renaissance Book Reviews. groov y Books for You to Read. Web. 02 Apr. 2012. .Jean Toomer Biography. Department of Mathematics, University at Buffalo. Web. 02 Apr. 2012. .