All Formats & Editions

Originally published in 1923, Jean Toomer's Cane remains an innovative literary work--part drama, party poetry, part fiction. This revised Norton Critical Edition builds upon the First Edition (1988), which was edited by the late Darwin T. Turner, a pioneering scholar in the... Read Full Overview

First published in 1923, Jean Toomer's Cane is an innovative literary work--part drama, part poetry, part fiction--powerfully evoking black life in the South. Rich in imagery, Toomer's impressionistic, sometimes surrealistic sketches of Southern rural and urban life are permeated... Read Full Overview

The Harlem Renaissance writer's innovative and groundbreaking novel depicting African American life in the South and North, with a foreword by National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree Zinzi Clemmons

First published in 1923, Cane is a significant work of Modernist fiction and a literary Goliath of the Harlem Renaissance. In this wholly original novel Jean Toomer highlights issues of class and caste in a three-part pastiche of poems, vignettes, and play-like stories. The... Read Full Overview

"[Cane] has been reverberating in me to an astonishing degree. I love it passionately; could not possibly exit without it." -- Alice Walker
"A breakthrough in prose and poetical writing .... This book should be on all readers' and writers' desks and in their minds."... Read Full Overview

A series of vignettes exploring African American life as it relates to social, political and family dynamics. For many, Cane is considered a literary masterpiece from visionary writer, Jean Toomer. He presents a diverse collection of tales with distinct and vibrant... Read Full Overview

The book is structured as a series of vignettes revolving around the origins and experiences of African Americans in the United States. The vignettes alternate in structure between narrative prose, poetry, and play-like passages of dialogue. As a result, the novel has been... Read Full Overview

Karintha, at twelve, was a wild flash that told the other folks just what it was to live. At sunset, when there was no wind, and the pinesmoke 2from over by the sawmill hugged the earth, and you couldnt see more than a few feet in front, her sudden darting past you was a bit... Read Full Overview

Cane is a collection of short stories, poems, and dramas, written by Harlem Renaissance author Jean Toomer in 1923. The stories focus around African-American culture in both the North and the South during times when racism and Jim Crow laws still abounded. Vignettes of... Read Full Overview

First published in 1923, "Cane" by Jean Toomer, is one of the most significant books to come out of the Harlem Renaissance. Jean Toomer, born Nathaniel Pinchback Toomer in Washington D. C. in 1894, was raised by his mother and her wealthy parents after being abandoned by his... Read Full Overview

"Backgrounds" contains generous excerpts from Jean Toomer's correspondence with fellow writers Sherwood Anderson, Waldo Frank, and Allen Tate, and with his publisher, Horace Liveright.

Darwin T. Turner's "Introduction" (to the 1975 Liveright edition of Cane), reprinted... Read Full Overview

Jean Toomer delivers a vivid depiction of America in the early twentieth century that centers the Black experience, consisting of family, religion, romance and race. It's a detailed work of fiction that's closely rooted in reality.

A collection of disparate stories... Read Full Overview

Cane explores spiritual and emotional frustration, failure of basic communication between individuals, and repression of natural energies. It reveals the chaos of contemporary black American life and calls for a spiritual awakening. A land mark novel that changed the way America... Read Full Overview

The Harlem Renaissance writer's innovative and groundbreaking novel depicting African American life in the South and North

Jean Toomer's Cane is one of the most significant works to come out of the Harlem Renaissance, and is considered to be a masterpiece... Read Full Overview