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Jay Hart
Toomer, Jean (1894–1967)
Jean Toomer came of age as an artist in an era
on the verge of great cultural change. Influenced
by trends in European modernism, but deeply
impressed by the loss of the natural beauty and
African-American community in the rural Ameri-
can South, Toomer composed one of the most
unique and enduring works of American litera-
ture, Cane. The work itself is as enigmatic as its
writer. As a biracial man in early 20th-century
America, Toomer struggled with his identity most
of his life, at various times even denying his Af-
rican-American heritage. Born in 1894 as Nathan
Eugene Pinchback Toomer in Washington, D.C.,
he spent even his earliest years in turmoil. His fa-
ther, Nathan Toomer, left the family when Toomer
was only a year old. His maternal grandfather took
Toomer and his mother, Nina, into his home but
was apparently a difficult surrogate father. P. B.
S. Pinchback, Toomer’s grandfather, once an act-
ing lieutenant governor in the state of Louisiana
during Reconstruction, at different times lived as
an African American or passed as a white man.
The racial and cultural confusion of this situation
helped forge Toomer’s own ambivalent identity.
In 1905 Toomer’s mother remarried. The family
moved to Brooklyn, but four years later, after his
mother’s death, Toomer was back in Washington,
D.C., with his grandparents. Toomer also lived for a
time with his uncle, who was a scholar. Toomer, who
had always excelled in school, was later influenced
by his uncle when he began to consider a career as
a writer. However, he first enrolled in college at the
University of Wisconsin–Madison to study agricul-
ture. Toomer’s father had been a farmer and per-
haps inspired this choice of study. But the next year,
in 1915, Toomer dropped out of school to pursue
other interests. His college career was marked by
diverse studies and indecision. At various times he
studied at the University of Chicago, the American
College of Physical Training, New York University,
and City College of New York. He took courses in
biology, philosophy, psychology, history, pre-law,
and sociology, at various points desiring to become
a medical doctor and a physical education instruc-
tor. By 1918, he was studying music and literature
on his own in Wisconsin. He finally returned to
New York to continue his interest in music at the
behest of his frustrated grandfather.
In New York City Toomer began to seriously
consider writing as a vocation. Surrounded by
modernist intellectuals and artists, he finally
found his niche. Between 1920 and 1922, Toomer
read the important writers of the time, including
Sigmund Freud, James Joyce, Sherwood Anderson,
and Theodore Dreiser. In 1920 Toomer returned
to Washington when his grandfather became ill.
Toomer cared for his grandparents until he was
forced to look for a job to ease the family’s finan-
cial burden. He accepted a position as the head of
an agricultural school in Sparta, Georgia. This trip
to the South would profoundly affect Toomer and
lead to the composition of Cane.
Though Cane is often highlighted as one of the
great works of the HARLEM RENAISSANCE, ToomerToomer, Jean 501