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“Brought to the edge of distasteful reality, her fastidious nature did not recoil. Better, far better, to share him than to lose him completely. Oh, she could close her eyes, if need be. She could bear it.”

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“Strange, that she couldn’t now be sure that she had ever truly known love. Not even for Brian. He was her husband and the father of her sons. But was he anything more? Had she ever wanted or tried for more? In that hour she thought not.”

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“Clare began to talk, steering carefully away from anything that might lead towards race or other thorny subjects. It was the most brilliant exhibition of conversational weightlifting that Irene had ever seen.”

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“Was she never to be free of it, that fear which crouched, always, deep down within her, stealing away the sense of security, the feeling of permanence, from the life which she had so admirably arranged for them all, and desired so ardently to have remain as it was?”

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“I’ve often wondered why more colored girls … never ‘passed’ over. It’s such a frightfully easy thing to do. If one’s the type, all that’s needed is a little nerve.”

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“She wished to find out about this hazardous business of passing, this breaking away from all that was familiar and friendly to take one’s chances in another environment, not entirely strange, perhaps, but certainly not entirely friendly.”

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“She was caught between two allegiances, different, yet the same. Herself. Her race. Race! The thing that bound and suffocated her. Whatever steps she took, or if she took none at all, something would be crushed. A person or the race. Clare, herself, or the race.”

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“The trouble with Clare was, not only that she wanted to have her cake and eat it too, but that she wanted to nibble at the cakes of other folk as well.”

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The Harlem Renaissance movement in New York City of the 1920s ushered in an era of immense cultural and creative achievement. African-American women who had long faced the dual struggle of race and gender practiced in a multitude of creative fields found a more welcoming oasis for their talents than ever before.

At right, Zora! The Life of Zora Neale Hurston by Dennis Brindell Fadin and Judith Bloom Fradin, a middle grade biography of one of the most legendary personalities from the Harlem Renaissance.

In 1920s New York, a great number of black women made a name for themselves as writers, playwrights, poets, editors, and journalists. Using their talent to tell stories, they also worked as educators, editors. librarians, musicians, and more. Here we highlight twelve women writers of the Harlem Renaissance, who were indeed Renaissance women:

Gwendolyn B. Bennett (1902 - 1981) was a multitalented poet, short story writer, visual artist, and journalist. Pride in African heritage and the influence of African dance and music were threads that ran through her work. She was an enormous booster of the Harlem Renaissance movement, and was dedicated to African-American women's rights and education. During the Depression, she worked as an administrator on the New York City Works Progress Administration Federal Arts Project (1935-1941), and dedicated herself to advancing the careers of young black artists. More about Gwendolyn B. Bennett on Modern American Poetry.

Marita Bonner (June 16, 1899 - December 7, 1971) was a short story writer, playwright, and essayist. Between 1925 to 1927 she produced a great number of short stories featuring characters from varied cultures navigating urban life. In the late 1920s, she wrote three plays, the best known of which was The Purple Flower (1928).

Her writing often dealt with the challenges facing black communities in a racist society. To wit, her best-known essay was "On Being Young - A Woman -And Colored." Perhaps a predecessor of Lorraine Hansberry's "To be Young, Gifted, and Black"? More about Marita Bonner on BlackPast.

Jessie Redmon Fauset (April 27, 1882 - April 30, 1961) was an American editor, poet, essayist, and novelist. Her literary output was modest, but her tenure as the literary editor of the NAACP's magazine, The Crisis, was significant. With a keen eye for talent, she introduced readers to Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, Claude McKay, and other notable authors and poets of the era. She was considered one of the seven "midwives" of the Harlem Renaissance movement. More about Jessie Fauset here on Literary Ladies Guide.

, the influential journal of the NAACP, and other Harlem Renaissance anthologies. Her play, Angelina Weld Grimké (1880 - 1958) was an American journalist, essayist, playwright and poet whose work was extensively published in The Crisis Rachel (1920) was one of the first staged staged productions of a work by a woman of color.

The program read: "This is the first attempt to use the stage for race propaganda in order to enlighten the American people relative to the lamentable condition of the millions of Colored citizens in this free republic." She's considered hugely important to the growth of the Harlem Renaissance movement, yet her personal work and contributions are under-appreciated. More about Angelina Weld Grimké at Black History Now.

Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 - January 28, 1960), was a novelist, memoirist, and folklorist. With her determined intelligence and humor, she quickly became a big name in the Harlem Renaissance movement. She had a dual career as a writer (producing novels, short stories, plays, and essays) and as an anthropologist. Her best-known work is the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937).

By the time of her death in 1960, she was impoverished and largely forgotten. Fortunately, Alice Walker pushed to revive her reputation in the early 1970s, and now, Zora's works are far more widely read and studied than they were in her lifetime. More about Zora Neale Hurston here on Literary Ladies.

Georgia Douglas Johnson (1880 - 1966) was best known as a poet active during the Harlem Renaissance era, though she also was an avid musician, and teacher, and an anti-lynching activist. She was one of the first African-American female playwrights, and produced four books of poetry.

Her poem "The Heart of a Woman"(1916) influenced Maya Angelou, whose 1981 memoir of the same name pays direct homage to Johnson. Threads running through her work were motherhood and navigating life in America as a woman of color. More about Georgia Douglas Johnson here on Literary Ladies Guide.

Helene Johnson (1906 - 1995) was only 21 when her poem, "Bottled," was published in Vanity Fair in 1927. It was considered innovative and unconventional. Like her cousin Dorothy West, she moved to Harlem in the 1920s, and befriended other literary figures like Zora Neale Hurston.

Her last published poems appeared in Challenge: A Literary Quarterly, in 1935. Though she stopped publishing, she continued to write a poem a day for the rest of her long life. More about Helene Johnson on My Poetic Side.

Nella Larsen (1891 - 1964) produced a body of writing that was modest, but she was considered a respected voice emanating from the Harlem Renaissance movement. She was the first African-American woman to graduate from library school and to receive the Guggenheim Fellowship for creative writing.

The theme of her life, and in effect, her work, was a sense of never belonging - not to any community, nor even to an immediate family. Quicksand and Passing, her two short, exquisite novels, are still read and studied. More about Nella Larsen here on Literary Ladies Guide.

Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson (1875 - 1935) was a multifaceted writer, journalist, and teacher. She used her pen to advocate for the rights of women and African-Americans during the heady 1920s and beyond into the Depression era of thee 1930s.

In her searingly honest essays, she wrote of the hardships of growing up mixed-race in Louisiana and explored the complex issues faced by women of color. She was also considered one of the premier poets of the Harlem Renaissance. More about Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson, including links to several of her poems on The Poetry Foundation.

Effie Lee Newsome (1885-1979) focused most of her poetic talents in the area of children's poetry during the Harlem Renaissance. Her writings were widely published in the NAACP's The Crisis, and the Urban League's Opportunity. She edited the children's column "Little Page" in the Crisis.

Her poetry encouraged younger readers to appreciate their worth and beauty - some have written that her poetry foretold the Black is Beautiful movement. Later in her career, she worked as a children's librarian in Ohio, extending her interest in promoting books and literature to children. More about Effie Lee Newsome on poets.org.

Esther Popel (1896-1958), writer, teacher, and activist, wrote poetry that didn't shy away from bitterness as her words reflected on injustice, racial prejudice, and violence against black Americans. Like many of her contemporaries of the Harlem Renaissance, she published in The Crisis and Opportunity, and won awards for her work.

Having been well-educated herself, she lobbied for opportunities for women of color and served on the board of the National Association of College Women for two decades. See more about Esther Popel on My Poetic Side.

Dorothy West (1907 - 1998) didn't produce a large body of work, but her writing is admired for its nuanced views of middle and upper middle-class African-American community. In the mid-1920s, at age 17, she submitted her first short story, "The Typewriter," to a writing contest and shared first prize with , with whom she became great friends.

Her part in the Harlem Renaissance Movement laid the groundwork for many of her later endeavors, including founding the literary magazine Challenge, and her novels The Living is Easy and The Wedding. More about Dorothy West here on Literary Ladies Guide.

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Renaissance Women: 12 Female Writers of the Harlem Renaissance

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The Harlem Renaissance movement in New York City of the 1920s ushered in an era of immense cultural and creative achievement. African-American women who had long faced the dual struggle of race and gender practiced in a multitude of creative fields found a more welcoming oasis for their talents than ever before.

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“She isn’t stupid. She’s intelligent enough in a purely feminine way. Eighteenth-century France would have been a marvelous setting for her, or the old South if she hadn’t made the mistake of being born a Negro.”

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“Lies, injustice, and hypocrisy are a part of every ordinary community. Most people achieve a sort of protective immunity, a kind of callousness, toward them. If they didn’t, they couldn’t endure.”

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“It’s funny about ‘passing.’ We disapprove of it and at the same time condone it. It excites our contempt and yet we rather admire it. Why shy away from it with an odd kind of revulsion, but we protect it.”

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The Harlem Renaissance & Langston Hughes

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This video deals with The Harlem Renaissance and it's culture.

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Oprah on the Pressure to "Pass for White" | The Oprah Winfrey Show | Oprah Winfrey Network

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The chosen exile of racial "passing": Allyson Hobbs at TEDxStanford

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By the end of the session, students will be able to discuss at least two different representations of race in the texts.

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To analyse the texts and how they depict and present issues of race in America.

We will also take time for our half-term quiz.