Professor’s Corner presents Rudolph Fisher: the Best Harlem Renaissance Writer You’ve Never Heard Of

Come celebrate Black History Month with a look backwards – courtesy of the best Harlem Renaissance writer you’ve never heard of, Rudolph Fisher.  Professor’s Corner, a discussion group devoted to literary texts, will meet at the South Branch on Wednesday, February 8 at 7 pm.  Genevieve West, professor of English at Texas Woman’s University, will present some biographical information about Fisher and lead a discussion about his stories “City of Refuge” and “High Yaller.”

 

Rudolph Fisher (1897-1934) was a physician and fiction writer who published his first short story at the height of the Harlem Renaissance in 1925, only to die tragically from stomach cancer nine years later.  The author of two novels (including the first African-American detective novel) and numerous short stories, Fisher wrote exclusively about Harlem life, taking us inside the class, skin color, generational, regional, and gender conflicts that impacted the lives of those who left the South for urban opportunities in the 1920’s.  His fiction is populated with the everyday folks who made Harlem home: door men, students, dancers, criminals, grandmothers, real estate moguls, police officers, and seamstresses.

 

We’ll explore two of his best stories.  “City of Refuge,” which appeared in Atlantic Monthly in 1925, has become a hallmark example of migration fiction and focuses on the under-life of Harlem.  The second, “High Yaller,” appeared the same year in The Crisis, but it looks at the middle-class life of light-skinned African Americans.  From a historical perspective, reading Fisher’s fiction provides a look at the diverse lives of Harlemites in the twenties, but the carefully-wrought fiction also reflects Harlem Renaissance artists’ interests in incorporating folk – their language and their music – into art.

 

 

 

When:             Wednesday, February 8 at 7:00 pm

Where:           Denton Public Library – South Branch

                        3228 Teasley Lane in Denton

 

For more information, please call (940) 349-8752 or email Fred.Kamman@cityofdenton.com.

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