Countee Cullen  (1903 - 1946)

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Call and Response: The Riverside Anthology of the African American Literary Tradition by Patricia Liggins Hill (Editor), Bernard W. Bell (Editor), Trudier Harris, Patricia Liggins Hill (Editor)

More than a decade in the making, Call and Response is a ground-breaking anthology of African American literature, unique in its placing equal emphasis on the written and the oral dimensions of the black aesthetic. It traces the centuries-long emergence of this distinct literary tradition from its earliest roots in African proverbs, folktales, and chants to its latest flowering in the works of such writers as Rita Dove, August Wilson, and Terry McMillan. Here, in 2,000 pages and 550 selections, is (in the words of Richard Wright) the "long black song" of African American life, sung in a great choir of voices, from the slaves of the 1600s to the rap artists, orators, novelists, and poets of today.

Among the works included are Frederick Douglass's Life and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye--both presented complete and unabridged. Here too are hundreds of spirituals and work songs, jazz and blues lyrics, poems, plays, stories, and speeches. An audio CD, produced in conjunction with the Smithsonian Institution, features many of the texts as spoken or sung by their creators.

The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader by David L. Lewis (Editor)

This collection magnificently represents the great voices of this era. The volume includes the work of some forty-five Renaissance figures: short fiction and self-contained novel excerpts by Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen, Wallace Thurman, and Jean Toomer; poems by Gwendolyn Bennett, Countee Cullen, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Langston Hughes, and Claude McKay; essays, manifestos, speeches, and nostalgic reminiscences by Romare Bearden, W. E. B. Dubois, Marcus Garvey, James Weldon Johnson, Alain Locke, and Richard Wright.

The Harlem Renaissance : Hub of African-American Culture, 1920-1930 by Steven Watson

Now available in paperback, this richly-illustrated book contains more than 70 black-and-white photographs and drawings. Steven Watson clearly traces the rise and flowering of this movement, evoking its main figures as well as setting the scene--describing Harlem from the Cotton Club to its literary salons, from its white patrons like Carl van Vechten to its most famous entertainers such as Duke Ellington, Josephine Baker, Ethel Waters, Alberta Hunter, Fats Waller, Bessie Smith, and Louis Armstrong among many others. He depicts the social life of working-class speakeasies, rent parties, gay and lesbian nightlife, as well as the celebrated parties at the twin limestone houses owned by hostess A'Lelia Walker. This is an important history of one of America's most influential cultural phenomenons.

Critical Essays : Gay and Lesbian Writers of Color by Emmanuel S. Nelson (Editor)

This text includes the essay, "Countee Cullen's Uranian 'Soul Windows,'" by Alden Reimonenq, as well as other Native-American, Asian-American, Latino(a), and African-American gay and lesbian writers.

Countee Cullen Biography

By Petri Liukkonen

Excerpt:

American poet, a leading figure with Langston Hughes in the Harlem Renaissance (see more below). This 1920s artistic movement produced the first large body of work in the United States written by African Americans. However, Cullen considered poetry raceless, although his poem 'The Black Christ' took a racial theme, lynching of a black youth for a crime he did not commit...

Poetry and Prose of the Harlem Renaissance:  Countee Cullen

This site hosts the following poems:

Knock Me A Kiss

Interview with Charles Smith by Jennie Ricciardi

Excerpt:

JR: Can you put the play in an historical context for us?
 
CS: It's set in 1928. Yolande Du Bois, the daughter of W.E.B. Du Bois is married to Countee Cullen in a wedding that happened in April of 1928—that was considered to be the marriage of the century actually—in Harlem. Langston Hughes was one of their groomsmen. The wedding was officiated by Reverend Cullen, who was Countee Cullen's adoptive father and presided over by the father of the bride, W.E.B. Du Bois. There were approximately three hundred people invited, but apparently thousands of people showed up at the church hours before just to get a glimpse of the wedding party. The wedding was considered to be a big deal, it was part of W.E.B. Du Bois's idea of showcasing a new Negro in the country — someone who was talented, who was attractive, and who was thought could lead the race into freedom.

JR: How historically accurate is your play?
 
CS: The structure is historically accurate: these two people were married. Countee Cullen married Yolande Du Bois. That's historically accurate. Countee, a couple of months after the wedding, sailed to Paris with the best man from the wedding. That's historically accurate. Presumably that happens after the play ends—the play certainly deals with that. I don't know what these people said to each other...

A Few Black Gay or Bisexual Men and Women Who Changed the World:  Countee Cullen

By Aslan Brooke

Excerpt:

Sometime after 1911 he appeared in Harlem and came to the attention of the Rev. Frederick A. Cullen, who took an interest in the young men's boxing club, liked to use his wife's makeup, and unofficially adopted Countee; after 1911 the poet identified himself as Countee Cullen. On 11 different occasions, the Rev. Cullen took Countee, often, according to "Gay & Lesbian Biography," accompanied by other male lovers, to Jerusalem; Mrs. Cullen stayed at home, and in his poem, "Fruit of the Flower," Countee wrote that the man and the boy shared a "sacred sin..."

In 1928, at a highly-publicized ceremony attended by several thousand, Countee married Nina Yolande Du Bois, the daughter of W.E.B. Du Bois, but two months later, according to Chuck Tarver's "Blacklist," sailed off to Europe with Harold Jackman, his best man at the wedding. In 1930, Yolande Cullen was granted a divorce in Paris. In 1940, he married Ida Mae Roberson, sister of the then well-known singer Orlando Roberson; according to some sources, the marriage was highly successful...

Names Index:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
| Authors Index | Scholars Index |