and two works set in cities reminiscent of Mar-
seilles and Tangier.
Gingertown is sometimes misidentified as a
novel and even as a collection of poems. However,
it is a set of 12 short stories with settings in
HARLEM, Jamaica, and North Africa. Novelist
RUDOLPHFISHER, who reviewed it for the New
York Herald Tribune,remarked that the work fo-
cused on the personal and social trials of “displaced
people.”
Published by HARPER &BROTHERS in the
midst of the Depression, the book had disappoint-
ing sales. There were a number of positive reviews,
but the book also prompted McKay’s peers, like
the writer Rudolph Fisher, to suggest that McKay
was now far removed from the Harlem that he as-
pired to depict. Critics did applaud the apparent
“authenticity and... quality of acrid poignancy” of
the stories set in Jamaica.
Bibliography
Cooper, Wayne. Claude McKay: Rebel Sojourner in the
Harlem Renaissance.New York: Schocken Books,
1987.
Gladiola Gardens: Poems of Outdoors
and Indoors for Second Grade Readers
Mary Effie Lee Newsome(1940)
The only volume of collected works by the profes-
sor, poet, and influential children’s literature
writer MARYEFFIELEENEWSOME. Published at
the close of the Harlem Renaissance, the book in-
cluded poems published previously in THECRISIS.
The celebrated painter Lois Mailou Jones pro-
vided the evocative pen-and-ink illustrations of
children at play.
The most-often-cited poem of the collection is
“Morning Light.” With its suspenseful language,
Newsome recounts the movements of “dew boys,”
the children often used by European hunters in
Africa to make a path through high grasses. The
“little black boy, / A naked black boy” of the poem
emerges “Through heavy menace and mystery / Of
half-waking tropic dawn.”
In 1999 Newsome’s poems were republished
for the first time since their publication in The Cri-
sisand Gladiola Gardens.
Bibliography
Bishop, Rudine Sims, comp. Wonders: The Best Children’s
Poems of Effie Lee Newsome.Honesdale, Pa.: Boyds
Mill Press, 1999.
Roses, Lorraine Elena, and Ruth Elizabeth Randolph.
Harlem Renaissance and Beyond: Literary Biographies
of 100 Black Women Writers, 1900–1945.Boston: G.
K. Hall & Co., 1990.Goat AlleyErnest Howard Culbertson(1921)
A sobering play about an African-American couple
beset by various social injustices. The white play-
wright Ernest Howard Culbertson joined the group
of white writers like Octavus Roy Cohen, John
Spivak, and DUBOSE HEYWARD who explored
black themes in their works.
The play, which one NEWYORKTIMESre-
viewer reviled, chronicles the unfortunate life of a
young girl whose lover is imprisoned. She turns to
a life of prostitution, and when he is released, he
abandons her and their child. Despite its harrow-
ing reception in the press, the play was recognized
for its contributions to African-American drama.
ALAINLOCKEand MONTGOMERYGREGORY se-
lected Goat Alleyand Rackey(1919), an earlier
Culbertson play, for inclusion in Plays of Negro Life
(1927).
Goat Alley opened in June 1921 at the Bijou
Theatre in NEWYORKCITYwith an all-black cast
that included Barrington Carter, Beulah Daniels,
Lillian McKee, and William H. Smith. The Tous-
saint Players revived the work six years later and
staged it in April 1927 at the Princess Theatre.Bibliography
Krasner, David. A Beautiful Pageant: African American
Theatre, Drama, and Performance in the Harlem Re-
naissance, 1910–1927.New York: Palgrave Macmil-
lan, 2002.
Locke, Alain, and Montgomery Gregory, eds. Plays of
Negro Life: A Source-Book of Native American
Drama.New York: Harper & Brothers, 1927.God Sends SundayArna Bontemps(1931)
Published by HARCOURT,BRACEin 1931, this was
the first novel that ARNABONTEMPSpublished.
He dedicated the work to “P.B. Bontemps,” the ini-184 Gladiola Gardens: Poems of Outdoors and Indoors for Second Grade Readers