Infants of the Spring

(Paperback)

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Published to mixed reception, Wallace Thurmans Infants of the Spring is a controversial take on the realities of Black life in the shadow of a cultural boom. ...youre right. I was frightened. After all I had never seen a Negro before in my life, that is, not over two or three, and they were only dim, passing shadows with no immediate reality. New York itself was alarming enough, but when I emerged from the subway at 135th Street, I was actually panic stricken. It was the most eerie experience I have ever had. I felt alien, creepy, conspicuous, ashamed. I wanted to camouflage my white skin, and assume some protective coloration. At times disillusioned by the cultural boom that was the Harlem Renaissance, Wallace Thurman formed a small group, The Niggerati, built up of artists and intellectuals who often clashed with the ideals of the movement. Dedicated to showing Black life as it was rather than as it should be, he produced his second novel, Infants of the Spring, a deconstruction and satire of the time when the Negro was in vogue. Professionally typeset with a beautifully designed cover, this edition of Infants of Spring is a sensational reimagining of a Harlem Renaissance satire for the modern reader.

Author Bio

Wallace Thurman (1902 - 1934) was a Black novelist and figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Born in Salt Lake City, Thurman was a lifelong reader and writer who completed his first novel at ten and read the likes of Shakespeare, Havelock Ellis, and Charles Baudeliare. Moving to Harlem at the height of the Renaissance, Thurman had his hand in multiple literary productions such as The Messenger, World Tomorrow, and Fire!!!. A strong critic of the New Negro movement, Thurman found himself a part of the "Niggerati"--a group of Black artists and intellectuals who wanted to use their art to showcase African-American life as it authentically was whether good or bad--firmly against appealing to the Black middle class or the white gaze. Becoming one of the first Black readers at a major New York publishing house and experiencing prejudice on both sides of the color line, he felt moved to write The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life and three years later, Infants of Spring. Said by Langston Hughes to be, "...a strangely brilliant black boy, who had read everything and whose critical mind could find something wrong with everything he read," Thurman was a complex and important voice in the Harlem Renaissance.