LibGuides: African American Women Writers: Jessie Redmon Fauset

Jessie Redmon Fauset (1882-1961), American novelist, essayist, and editor, was a key figure in the African American literary movement of the 1920s known as the Harlem Renaissance. As literary editor of The Crisis, the publication of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), she promoted the early careers of such Harlem Renaissance luminaries as Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Claude McKay, and Countee Cullen. Years later, in his autobiography, The Big Sea (1940), Hughes recalled Fauset's pivotal role in the birth of the Renaissance: 'Jessie Fauset, Charles S. Johnson, and Alain Locke were the three people who mid-wifed the so-called New Negro literature into being. They nursed us along until our books were born.' Fauset's own writing frequently explores the theme of racial identity and the need for African Americans to overcome self-loathing in order to transcend prejudice. Through her work Fauset also strove to persuade a white audience of their common humanity with African Americans.

Genre: Literary fiction

More about Jessie Redmon Fauset at ProQuest One Literature

By Jessie Redmon Fauset

Comedy, American Style by Jessie Redmon Fauset
Jessie Redmon Fauset's fourth and final novel, recounts the tragic tale of a family's destruction - the story of a mother who denies her clan its heritage. Originally published in 1933, this intense narrative stands the test of time and continues to raise compelling, disturbing, and still contemporary themes of color prejudice and racial self-hatred. Several of today's bestselling novelists echo subject matter first visited in Fauset's commanding work, which overflows with rich, vivid, and complex characters who explore questions of color, passing, and black identity. Selected essays and poems penned by Fauset are also included, among them "Yarrow Revisited" and "Oriflamme," which help highlight the full canon of her extraordinary contribution to literature and provide contextual background to the novel.
Plum bun : a novel without a moral by Jessie Redmon Fauset
The story of a Angela Murray, a young black girl who discovers that passing for white brings its own problems in New York in the 1920s.
There is confusion by Jessie Redmon Fauset
Set in early-twentieth-century New York City, There Is Confusion tells the story of three Black children: Joanna Marshall, a talented dancer willing to sacrifice everything for success; Maggie Ellersley, an extraordinarily beautiful girl determined to leave her working-class background behind; and Peter Bye, a clever would-be surgeon who is driven by his love for Joanna. As children, Maggie, Joanna, and Peter support one another's dreams, but as young adults, romance threatens to upset the balance of their friendship. One afternoon, Joanna makes two irrevocable decisions--and sets off a chain of events that wreaks havoc with all of their lives.

About Jessie Redmon Fauset

Black Sister: poetry by black American women, 1746-1980 by Erlene Stetson (Editor)
Introductory essays are followed by selections from the works of 58 African-American women poets dating back to the eighteenth century.
Conjuring, Black Women, Fiction, and Literary Tradition by Marjorie Pryse; Majorie Pyrse; Hortense J. Spillers
This collection of essays explains the emergence of black women novelists in contemporary American literature and the cultural and personal influences that made it possible for them to find their literary authority. Beginning with the 19th century origins of the tradition--the autobiographical writings and slave narratives--the volume discusses individual writers such as Pauline Hopkins, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Ann Petry and Octavia Butler; the aggregate significance of fiction by black women; and their influence on each other. Novels examined include Toni Cade Bambara's The Salt Eaters, Ann Petry's The Street, and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and The Bluest Eye.
Women of the Harlem Renaissance by Cheryl A. Wall
Features chapters on Jessie Redmon Fauset, Zora Neale Hurston and Nella Larsen. Also discusses other artists including Josephine Baker, Gwendolyn Bennett, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Charlotte Mason, Bessie Smith, Anne Spencer, and Jean Toomer.