A Beautiful Pageant: African American Theatre, Drama and Performance in the Harlem Renaissance

by David Krasner

Book Overview

The Harlem Renaissance was an unprecedented period of vitality in the American Arts. Defined as the years between 1910 and 1927, it was the time when Harlem came alive with theater, drama, sports, dance and politics. Looking at events as diverse as the prizefight between Jack Johnson and Jim 'White Hope' Jeffries, the choreography of Aida Walker and Ethel Waters, the writing of Zora Neale Hurston and the musicals of the period, Krasner paints a vibrant...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312295901
• ISBN13: 9780312295905
• Release Date: August 2002
• Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
• Length: 370 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.2" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

A Time of Rebirth

The Harlem Renaissance is defined by artlex.com as a literary and art movement in the uptown Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem, in the mid and late 1920's. In author David Krasner's A BEAUTIFUL PAGEANT, he provides a detailed capturing of a historical time when great pride and creativity for African Americans was not an unusual occurrence. Many people tend to think of the Harlem Renaissance as a time when only literary notables such as Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes emerged, but it was so much more. There was a strong little theatre movement, great choreographers such as Ethel Waters and Aida Overton Walker, and most surprising to me, one of the most controversial sporting events of the time. The boxing match between Jack Johnson, a flamboyant and confident black fighter and Jim Jeffries who was known as "The Great White Hope", the hope of white people was that Jim Jeffries would prove that he was superior to the arrogant and inferior black man. When Jack Johnson was crowned the winner, it was a springboard to pride among African Americans. Before I read this book I had a general view of what the Harlem Renaissance was about, but after finishing it, I have a much broader insight into this special era represented and produced. David Krasner is a very thorough writer and I was impressed with the attention to detail and the fact that the book was researched in depth. But as informative and knowledgeable as this book is, I was very frustrated while reading it because of the microscopic print which made it very difficult to read. If the font size of the print was larger this would have been a much more enjoyable read and my rating would have been a 4 instead of a 3.5. (RAW Rating: 3.5) Reviewed by Simone A. Hawks of The RAWSISTAZ™ Reviewers