Kayote B. (kayote) reviewed Women of the Harlem Renaissance (Women of Letters) on + 254 more book reviews
"Women" means 3 in specific (Faust, Larsen, Hurston) with occasional references to others. The beginning also makes a fuss about looking at non-literary women, but other than a few comments/comparisons to a jazz singer I didn't see that.
I wish the author had given Faust more space about the artists she mentored/discovered/launched, since that seemed to be the main long-term impact and impact on the movement. At least spend more time on the essays Faust was good at--instead the chapter kept talking about her novels which apparently weren't very good. I was left wondering why she was chosen as one of the three to be included if her work was that unimpressive. The entire chapter seemed a strange choice. With a refocusing it might have been a lot better.
The other two were better, but I wonder why so much detail on these three and none on others. I don't mind depth but I thin the book would have been better with six women and not quite the play-by-play details of, say, the voodoo trip, or one of the books gone through in detail.
I was not familiar with any of the discussed women, so maybe someone more familiar with the topic would find this more enlightening. I wondered why they seemed to all fizzle out after a little while and how many others there actually were. The critics on the books were repetitive and rarely found the proper amount of detail required--either I didn't have a good feel for what the author was talking about or I knew way more about the book than was needed.
Scholarly? Yes. Readable? Yes (if tedious in places). Topic that needs more attention? Yes. Needed more editing and some refocusing? Yes.
I wish the author had given Faust more space about the artists she mentored/discovered/launched, since that seemed to be the main long-term impact and impact on the movement. At least spend more time on the essays Faust was good at--instead the chapter kept talking about her novels which apparently weren't very good. I was left wondering why she was chosen as one of the three to be included if her work was that unimpressive. The entire chapter seemed a strange choice. With a refocusing it might have been a lot better.
The other two were better, but I wonder why so much detail on these three and none on others. I don't mind depth but I thin the book would have been better with six women and not quite the play-by-play details of, say, the voodoo trip, or one of the books gone through in detail.
I was not familiar with any of the discussed women, so maybe someone more familiar with the topic would find this more enlightening. I wondered why they seemed to all fizzle out after a little while and how many others there actually were. The critics on the books were repetitive and rarely found the proper amount of detail required--either I didn't have a good feel for what the author was talking about or I knew way more about the book than was needed.
Scholarly? Yes. Readable? Yes (if tedious in places). Topic that needs more attention? Yes. Needed more editing and some refocusing? Yes.
