Nigger Heaven

Last updated
Nigger Heaven
NHeaven.JPG
First edition of the text, with original dustwrapper, published 1926
Author Carl Van Vechten
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Genre Fiction
Publisher Alfred A. Knopf
Publication date
October 1926
Media typeHardback
Pages286
OCLC 647060292

Nigger Heaven is a novel written by Carl Van Vechten, and published in October 1926. The book is set during the Harlem Renaissance in the United States in the 1920s. The book and its title have been controversial since its publication.

Contents

The novel is a portrayal of life in the "great black walled city" of Harlem, part of New York City. It describes the interactions of African American intellectuals, political activists, bacchanalian workers, and other Harlem characters. The plot concerns two people, a quiet librarian and an aspiring writer, who try to keep their love alive as racism denies them every opportunity.

This roman à clef became an instant bestseller and served as an informal guide book to Harlem. It also split the Black literary community, as some including Langston Hughes and Nella Larsen appreciated it, while others like Countee Cullen and W. E. B. Du Bois regarded it as an "affront to the hospitality of black folks". The book fuelled a period of "Harlemania", during which the neighborhood became en vogue among white people, who then frequented its cabarets and bars.[ citation needed ]

Author

By the 1920s, Van Vechten was a noted music and dance critic in New York. Knopf had already published several of his novels by the time Nigger Heaven was conceived. He first became fascinated with Harlem when he read a book by a young Black writer, Walter White. He sought out White, who worked for the NAACP, and White introduced him to many black artists, which stimulated Van Vechten's appreciation for the Blues and for Harlem. [1] Van Vechten wrote to Gertrude Stein that, "I have passed practically my whole winter in company with Negroes and have succeeded in getting into most of the important sets", and told her of his future plans for "my negro novel". "This will not be a novel about negroes in the South or white contacts or lynchings. It will be about NEGROES, as they live now in the new city of Harlem (which is part of New York)." [1]

Synopsis

Title

"Nigger heaven" was a term used in the 19th century to refer to church balconies, which were segregated for African Americans, as the white members of the congregation sat below; cf. the use of paradise for the upper seats of a theatre. [2] [3]

Plot

The short novel begins with a prologue about a violent pimp named Scarlet Creeper. The main part of the book is structured as two novellas. The first novella is centered on Mary Love, a young librarian who is fascinated by the diverse cultures of Harlem in which she lives, as well as its different hierarchies, and wants to belong but is unsure of her place in it. She briefly has a relationship with a writer named Byron Kasson and they have extended conversations on literature and art.

The second novella is Byron's story. He greatly resents the segregated nature of New York. After his relationship with Mary, he takes up with a debauched socialite as they explore the wild side of Harlem. The socialite dumps him adding to his earlier negative views on the society in which they live. The novel ends with a violent confrontation involving Scarlet and Byron, and although Scarlet is at fault, Byron faces punishment for it. [1]

Reception

The book, due in part to the inclusion of the pejorative "nigger" in its title, was met with a mixed reception. It was initially banned in Boston. [4] Van Vechten's father was said to have written his son two letters imploring that he change the title to something less offensive. [5] Van Vechten discussed the title with poet Countee Cullen, who was enraged by it, and they had several arguments over it. [1] According to reviewer Kelefa Sanneh, one interpretation is that although he was a white man, he felt he had licence to use the pejorative because he had cultivated many professional and personal relationships in Harlem. Van Vechten suggested that he knew most would still be offended and not forgive him; he was not averse to using the controversy to boost publicity, and he knew at least some in Harlem would defend him. [1]

The ambivalence about the book, its title, and what it signifies about the author, has continued into the 21st century. [1] According to Sennah, Van Vechten meant the book to be a celebration of Harlem, but the title expressed the ambivalence about the place in the context of a largely segregated society. [1] Van Vechten put the titular expression in the dialogue of one of his characters, who explained that the denizens of Harlem were stuck in the balcony of New York City, while the whites in the "good seats" downtown only occasionally and cruelly acknowledged them to laugh or sneer, but not to know them. [1]

Despite central characters who were young, cultured, and Black, [1] many early reviews of the novel "focused on the supposed 'immorality' of the novel, the naked presentation of sex and crime." [6] W. E. B. Du Bois attacked the novel in an article published in The Crisis , the official magazine of the NAACP, upon its publication. [7] He later addressed the text in depth in the essay "On Carl Van Vechten's Nigger Heaven", where he called the novel "an affront to the hospitality of black folk and to the intelligence of white." [8]

Conversely, other prominent reviews by African Americans lauded the text. Among them was that of James Weldon Johnson, which appeared in Opportunity, the official journal of the National Urban League.

Wallace Thurman condemned both the text and the reaction to it. According to him, the novel wavers between sophistication and sentimentality, but sentimentality regrettably wins out; however, he says the "sting" of the book "to certain Negroes" is also not praiseworthy. [1] Poet Langston Hughes, a friend of Van Vechten's, would go on to write poems to replace the songs used in the original manuscript and in the first printings of the text. [9]

Opinions of the novel also diverged along racial lines. Many white critics of the time had little to compare Nigger Heaven to, and viewed the novel as an enlightening, forward-minded text. [10]

The controversy cast a long shadow over the reputation of its author. Ralph Ellison condemned both the book and the author in the 1950s. Historian of the Harlem Renaissance David Levering Lewis found the book at best quaint, but calls it a "colossal fraud", with Van Vechten's motives being a “a mixture of commercialism and patronizing sympathy.” [1] The book was successfully marketed to white people to exploit their fascination with the "other side of town".[ citation needed ] Later biographers, Emily Bernard (who nonetheless calls the title an "open wound"), and especially Edward White express more admiration for what Van Vechten attempted to do by crossing boundaries. [1]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claude McKay</span> Jamaican American writer and poet (1890–1948)

Festus Claudius "Claude" McKay OJ was a Jamaican-American writer and poet. He was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Countee Cullen</span> American author (1903–1946)

Countee Cullen was an American poet, novelist, children's writer, and playwright, particularly well known during the Harlem Renaissance.

<i>The Crisis</i> Official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

The Crisis is the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). It was founded in 1910 by W. E. B. Du Bois (editor), Oswald Garrison Villard, J. Max Barber, Charles Edward Russell, Kelly Miller, William Stanley Braithwaite, and Mary Dunlop Maclean. The Crisis has been in continuous print since 1910, and it is the oldest Black-oriented magazine in the world. Today, The Crisis is "a quarterly journal of civil rights, history, politics and culture and seeks to educate and challenge its readers about issues that continue to plague African Americans and other communities of color."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jessie Redmon Fauset</span> American writer, poet, and educator (1882–1961)

Jessie Redmon Fauset was an editor, poet, essayist, novelist, and educator. Her literary work helped sculpt African-American literature in the 1920s as she focused on portraying a true image of African-American life and history. Her black fictional characters were working professionals which was an inconceivable concept to American society during this time Her story lines related to themes of racial discrimination, "passing", and feminism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carl Van Vechten</span> American writer and photographer (1880–1964)

Carl Van Vechten was an American writer and artistic photographer who was a patron of the Harlem Renaissance and the literary executor of Gertrude Stein. He gained fame as a writer, and notoriety as well, for his 1926 novel Nigger Heaven. In his later years, he took up photography and took many portraits of notable people. Although he was married to women for most of his adult years, Van Vechten engaged in numerous homosexual affairs over his lifetime.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arna Bontemps</span> American poet, novelist (1902–1973)

Arna Wendell Bontemps was an American poet, novelist and librarian, and a noted member of the Harlem Renaissance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Niggerati</span> Harlem renaissance intellectual group

Niggerati was the name used, with deliberate irony, by Wallace Thurman for the group of young African-American artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance. "Niggerati" is a portmanteau of "nigger" and "literati". The rooming house where he lived, and where that group often met, was similarly christened Niggerati Manor. The group included Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and several of the people behind Thurman's journal FIRE!!, such as Richard Bruce Nugent, Jonathan Davis, Gwendolyn Bennett, and Aaron Douglas.

African American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. It begins with the works of such late 18th-century writers as Phillis Wheatley. Before the high point of enslaved people narratives, African American literature was dominated by autobiographical spiritual narratives. The genre known as slave narratives in the 19th century were accounts by people who had generally escaped from slavery, about their journeys to freedom and ways they claimed their lives. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s was a great period of flowering in literature and the arts, influenced both by writers who came North in the Great Migration and those who were immigrants from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands. African American writers have been recognized by the highest awards, including the Nobel Prize given to Toni Morrison in 1993. Among the themes and issues explored in this literature are the role of African Americans within the larger American society, African American culture, racism, slavery, and social equality. African-American writing has tended to incorporate oral forms, such as spirituals, sermons, gospel music, blues, or rap.

<i>The New Negro</i> 1925 anthology edited by Alain Locke

The New Negro: An Interpretation (1925) is an anthology of fiction, poetry, and essays on African and African-American art and literature edited by Alain Locke, who lived in Washington, DC, and taught at Howard University during the Harlem Renaissance. As a collection of the creative efforts coming out of the burgeoning New Negro Movement or Harlem Renaissance, the book is considered by literary scholars and critics to be the definitive text of the movement. "The Negro Renaissance" included Locke's title essay "The New Negro", as well as nonfiction essays, poetry, and fiction by writers including Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Eric Walrond.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Negro</span> Term popularized during the Harlem Renaissance

"New Negro" is a term popularized during the Harlem Renaissance implying a more outspoken advocacy of dignity and a refusal to submit quietly to the practices and laws of Jim Crow racial segregation. The term "New Negro" was made popular by Alain LeRoy Locke in his anthology The New Negro.

<i>Fire!!</i> 1926 African-American literary magazine in New York City

Fire!! was an African-American literary magazine published in New York City in 1926 during the Harlem Renaissance. The publication was started by Wallace Thurman, Zora Neale Hurston, Aaron Douglas, John P. Davis, Richard Bruce Nugent, Gwendolyn Bennett, Lewis Grandison Alexander, Countee Cullen, and Langston Hughes. The magazine's title referred to burning up old ideas, and Fire!! challenged the norms of the older Black generation while featuring younger authors. The publishers promoted a realistic style, with vernacular language and controversial topics such as homosexuality and prostitution. Many readers were offended, and some Black leaders denounced the magazine. The endeavor was plagued by debt, and its quarters burned down, ending the magazine after just one issue.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harlem Renaissance</span> African-American cultural movement in New York City in the 1920s

The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater, politics and scholarship centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after The New Negro, a 1925 anthology edited by Alain Locke. The movement also included the new African American cultural expressions across the urban areas in the Northeast and Midwest United States affected by a renewed militancy in the general struggle for civil rights, combined with the Great Migration of African American workers fleeing the racist conditions of the Jim Crow Deep South, as Harlem was the final destination of the largest number of those who migrated north.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nora Holt</span> American critic, composer and singer (1884/5–1974)

Nora Douglas Holt was an American critic, composer, singer and pianist who was the first African American to receive a master's degree in music in the United States. She composed more than 200 works of music and was associated with the leading figures of the Harlem Renaissance and the co-founder of the National Association of Negro Musicians. She died in 1974 in Los Angeles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prentiss Taylor</span> American illustrator, lithographer and painter (1907-1991)

Prentiss Taylor was an American illustrator, lithographer, and painter. Born in Washington D.C., Taylor began his art studies at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, followed by painting classes under Charles Hawthorne in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and training at the Art Students League in New York City. In 1931, Taylor began studying lithography at the League. He became a member of one of the most important printmaking societies in America at that time, the Society of American Graphic Artists. Taylor interacted and collaborated with many writers and musicians in his time in New York in the late 1920s and early 30s. This was in the emergence of the Harlem Renaissance. Among his close friends and colleagues were Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten.

The Negro in Art: How Shall He Be Portrayed? was the title of a 1926 symposium hosted on the pages of The Crisis, the magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Over seven issues, various figures in American literary culture answered seven questions posed by the editors. According to scholar A.B. Christa Schwarz, the symposium's articles are an enduring resource, with relevance to "attitudes toward the black−white literary marketplace on the crucial issue of representation."

This article treats the usage of the word nigger in reference to African Americans and others of African or mixed African and other ethnic origin in the art of Western culture and the English language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harold Jackman</span> Educator, model, patron of the arts

Harold Jackman was a British-born teacher, model, and patron of the arts with emphasis on African American art and literature. Raised in Harlem, Jackman was known for his involvement in the Harlem Renaissance and his dedication to preserving African American cultural artifacts. He founded the Countee Cullen Memorial Collection at Atlanta University and contributed to the James Weldon Johnson Collection of Yale University, the Literary Collection of Fisk University, and to the Schomburg Collection at the Harlem branch of the New York Public Library. Along with Regina M. Anderson and Dorothy Randolph Peterson, he was also a co-founder of the Harlem Experimental Theater.

Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Black Poets of the Twenties: Anthology of Black Verse is a 1927 poetry anthology that was edited by Countee Cullen. It has been republished at least three times, in 1955, 1974, and 1995 and included works by thirty-eight African-American poets, including Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Georgia Douglas Johnson, James Weldon Johnson, and Claude McKay. The anthology also includes biographical sketches of the poets whose work is included in the book.

The Book of American Negro Poetry is a 1922 poetry anthology that was compiled by James Weldon Johnson. The first edition, published in 1922, was "the first of its kind ever published" and included the works of thirty-one poets. A second edition was released in 1931 with works by nine additional poets.

An Anthology of Verse by American Negroes is a 1924 poetry anthology compiled by Newman Ivey White and Walter Clinton Jackson. The anthology is considered one of the major anthologies of black poetry to be published during the Harlem Renaissance, and was republished in 1969. In reviews, the anthology has been positively received for the effort it made to compile poetry, but criticized for ambiguous criticism and poor selection of poems.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Sanneh, Kelefa (February 17, 2014). "White Mischief: The passions of Carl Van Vechten". The New Yorker .
  2. ↑ Perry, John (2011). George Washington Carver. Thomas Nelson. p. 90. ISBN   9781595554048.
  3. ↑ Caldwell, Erskine (1995). Deep South: Memory and Observation. University of Georgia Press. p. 192. ISBN   9780820317168.
  4. ↑ Van Vechten 2000 , p. xiii
  5. ↑ Van Vechten 2000 , p. xiv-v
  6. ↑ Worth 1995 , p. 464
  7. ↑ Helbling, Mark (1976). "Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance". Negro American Literature Forum. 10 (2): 39–47. doi:10.2307/3041204. JSTOR   3041204.
  8. ↑ Lewis 1995 , p. 106
  9. ↑ Hart, Robert C. (1973). "Literary Relations in the Harlem Renaissance". American Literature. 44 (4): 612–28. doi:10.2307/2924308. JSTOR   2924308.
  10. ↑ Worth 1995 , p. 492

Bibliography

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.