Last fall, the Library of America released two volumes featuring authors who wrote during the Harlem Renaissance, that vague early 20th-century era when black novelists, artists, poets, musicians, essayists and even publishers pushed black culture to the forefront.

The Harlem Renaissance served the purpose, awakening whites to the injustice of racism and assuring blacks that they weren‘t alone.

But the stories of the time were often what is now standard fare for Black History Month in February. Did we really need more woe-is-me bookends for English and African-American history teachers?

That’s the surprise. The selection of stories, amazingly, attests that among the philosophy and social commentary of much Harlem Renaissance literature is some delightful creativity. Washington University professor Rafia Zafar edited the collection and gives us much more than a warmed-over, academically conferred A-list of masters such as Richard Wright or Zora Neale Hurston.

Instead there are some real groundbreaking surprises:

--George S. Schuyler‘s “Black No More,” considered by many the first science fiction novel by a black writer. A black guy goes through a process (symbolically a wish-granting potion) that can turn him white! A fine predecessor to Octavia Butler, who has used skin color as a metaphor for a number of social issues.

--Nella Larsen’s troubling “Quicksand,” a tense, psycho-headbanger account of a woman trying to make it in early America even though her parents were Scandinavian and African.

--Arna Bontemps‘ metaphor of manhood and revolution, “Black Thunder,” is a fictionalized story about a true slave revolt in Virginia led by Gabriel Prosser. A fine predecessor to later fictionalized stories of the Buffalo Soldiers and Tuskegee Airmen.

--Langston Hughes’ word symphony “Not Without Laughter.” His lyrical, and only, novel begins with a tornado in the Midwest.

--Rudolph Fisher‘s dark “The Conjure-Man Dies,” considered by many the first mystery written by a black author. Incidentally, in my second reading after three decades, I saw the loins that spawned people like Walter Mosley and Chester Himes.

These are not just another bundle of obligatory texts to look up during Black History Month: These are for anyone who simply likes to read good books.

If you can only afford one volume, read the second volume with four novels of the 1930s.

But the entire collection is nine novels with the famous Library of America’s cocktail party snob notes (and I mean that really in a good way). Not a bad deal.

By Harry Jackson Jr.

(St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

(MCT Information Services)