{"product_id":"carl-van-vechten-and-the-harlem-renaissance-a-portrait-in-black-and-white-9780300192520","title":"Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance: A Portrait in Black and White","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA groundbreaking inquiry into the life of the audacious Carl Van Vechten, and his singular and singularly controversial contributions to the Harlem Renaissance\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Carl Van Vechten was a white man with a passion for blackness who played a crucial role in helping the Harlem Renaissance, a black movement, come to understand itself. \u003ci\u003eCarl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance \u003c\/i\u003eis grounded in the dramas occasioned by the Harlem Renaissance, as it is called today, or New Negro Renaissance, as it was called in the 1920s, when it first came into being. Emily Bernard focuses on writing--the black and white of things--the articles, fiction, essays, and letters that Carl Van Vechten wrote to black people and about black culture, and the writing of the black people who wrote to and about him. Above all, she is interested in the interpersonal exchanges that inspired the writing, which are ultimately far more significant than the public records would suggest.\u003cp\u003eThis book is a partial biography of a once controversial figure. It is not a comprehensive history of an entire life, but rather a chronicle of one of his lives, his black life, which began in his boyhood and thrived until his death. The narrative at the core of \u003ci\u003eCarl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance \u003c\/i\u003eis not an attempt to answer the question of whether Van Vechten was good or bad for black people, or whether or not he hurt or helped black creative expression during the Harlem Renaissance. As Bernard writes, the book instead \"enlarges that question into something much richer and more nuanced: a tale about the messy realities of race, and the complicated tangle of black and white.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eEmily Bernard\u003c\/b\u003e is an associate professor in the English Department and ALANA U.S. Ethnic Studies Program at University of Vermont. Her books include \u003ci\u003eRemember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten\u003c\/i\u003e, a \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e Notable Book of the Year. She lives in Burlington, VT.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Yale University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50503152926994,"sku":"9780300192520","price":52.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_fb8beb6e-51f7-4af7-b53b-8de5481c3514.jpg?v=1730784020","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/carl-van-vechten-and-the-harlem-renaissance-a-portrait-in-black-and-white-9780300192520","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}