Jean Toomer Biography Essay

Jean 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 mixed 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 attended all-black schools. After his mother remarried, they moved to New Rochelle, New York, and he attended 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 adult years, he refused to be segregated and wanted to be identified only as an American.Between 1914 and 1917 Jean Toomer attended the University of Wisconsin, the Massachusetts College of Agriculture, the American College of Physical Training in Chicago, the University of Chicago, New York University, and the City College of New York. He majored in agricultu re, fitness, biology, sociology, and history only when he never completed a degree.After leaving college, Jean published some short stories and continued writing after World struggle I. In 1923, Toomer returned to New York where he became friends with Waldo Frank, who became his mentor and editor on his novel Cane. In 1923, he published the novel Cane, in which he used clobber inspired by his time in Georgia. Below is an excerpt from his novel, Cane.whisper of yellow globesgleaming on lamp posts that swaylike bootleg licker drinkers in the confuseand let your breath be moist against melike bright beads on yellow globestelephone the power-housethat the main wires are insulate(her words bunk up and downdewy corridors of billboards)then with your tongue remove the tapeand press your lips to minetill they are incandescentReadingWoman.com states, Cane is one of the plant life of fiction that announced the arrival of the Harlem Renaissance. Though a slim volume, this collection of s ketches, stories and poems makes up a dense and powerful book. Through vivid imagery and regular(a) 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 tout ensemble themselves, their behavior reflecting the truth about who and what they are. Cane compels the reader to feel its power on a physical level. At the time the book was published, and still today, these full, spicy characters and images lead us to a greater understanding of the human condition. He stopped writing literary works in 1950. Jean Toomer died on defect 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. Great Books for You to Read. Web. 02 Apr. 2012. .Jean Toomer Biography. Department o f Mathematics, University at Buffalo. Web. 02 Apr. 2012. .