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THE SLEEPER WAKES -- HARLEM RENAISSANCE STORIES BY WOMEN |
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PREFACE I first came into contact with the Harlem Renaissance when I was assigned the novel Plum Bun to read for a course in American women writers. Three hundred and seventy-nine pages later, I was a changed person. Jessie Redmon Fauset touched me inside and gave birth to my interest in the period and, later, to my preparation of this book. When I went to New York the following summer, I found my way to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture to see what more I could learn about Fauset. There was so much information at the Schomburg that I made a habit of going there on weekends, searching through periodicals. It was not long before I realized that Fauset wrote a great deal more than just her four novels. I became equally interested in other women whose names kept appearing as authors of short fiction in The Crisis, Opportunity, and other publications. I soon realized that most of the stories by women, both the well known and the relatively obscure, had never been reprinted in book form. Maureen Honey's Shadowed Dreams, a volume of women poets of the Harlem Renaissance, served as a model for my work. This collection, like hers, is the first of its kind. Most of the stories that appear in this anthology were originally printed in African-American magazines during the Harlem Renaissance. And with the exception of the stories by Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and Marita Bonner, none has been reprinted since its original magazine publication. I chose the material for The Sleeper Awakes after spending several months reading stories on microfilm at the Schomburg Library. There were many stories to choose from, both by well-known writers and virtually unknown ones. I decided to include here only the work of women writers, because most of the writing by male authors of the Harlem Renaissance is available in reprint form and widely anthologized. The stories in this volume are by women who were as prolific during the Renaissance as their male counterparts, yet have been forgotten and overshadowed by them. I initially decided to prepare this anthology because there is not much information available about the women writers of the Harlem Renaissance, except for Zora Neale Hurston, Jessie Fauset, and Nella Larsen. Though there are many historical studies of the period, they focus primarily on the accomplishments of the male writers, artists, and political figures, such as Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, and Claude McKay. The revival of Hurston's works within the past few years has led to an increased curiosity about other women writers of the Renaissance. However, women's accomplishments have been marginalized, devalued, and ignored in many of the historical texts. The present anthology corrects this bias by devoting itself entirely to women writers of the Harlem Renaissance. I researched hundreds of stories, from which I have tried to select the most compelling, readable, and representative. These particular fictions fit together as a cohesive unit because they share such commonalities as links to slavery, a recognition of the double and sometimes triple oppression of black women, and issues involving the conflicts of color. Many of the women here use a male voice or protagonist to tell their stories, which make them similar to those written by African-American men. By using a male voice, the female writer was able to access the wider audience and readership of the periodicals in which they were published. The publication of this book will enable readers to finally view a more complete literary and artistic history of the Renaissance, one that includes women as prominent participants and leaders in the development of contemporary African-American literary culture.
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