Toomer, Jean << _jeen_ >> (1894-1967), was an African American writer. He is best known for Cane (1923), a book of poems, short stories, sketches, and a play about Black people in the North and the South. African American life in Cane is marked by frustration and tragedy but also by a hunger for spiritual integrity and a responsiveness to beauty. The work is noted for its poetic and evocative images of Southern life. Cane established Toomer as a leading American writer of the 1920’s. The book also inspired authors of the Harlem Renaissance, an important period in Black literary history.
Most of Toomer’s writings after Cane examine philosophical and psychological problems he saw in Americans. He wrote Essentials (1931), a collection of short statements called aphorisms on these problems. He also wrote book reviews, essays, poems, stories, and a novelette. Some were collected in The Wayward and the Seeking, published in 1980, after his death.
Toomer was born on Dec. 26, 1894, in Washington, D.C. His full name was Nathan Pinchback Toomer. When he was a child, his family called him Eugene, which he later shortened to Jean. He died on March 30, 1967.
