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he tossed out the confronting words, "I love this cultured hell which tests my youth." Did he refer to America or Harlem? Or both?

"No other writer is as closely linked to the invention of 20th century black literatures across the Atlantic world, from Harlem, to the islands of the English-speaking Caribbean, to Francophone Africa and its New World relations," Maxwell wrote in his introduction to "The Complete Poems" of Claude McKay (University of Illinois Press).

The homey vernacular in McKay's writing inspired Harlem Renaissance writers such as James Weldon, Johnson, Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. (In many ways, these three writers represent the diversity of writing presented in the Harlem Renaissance). McKay was "the light" inspiring the break from Victorian, white writing traditions.

James Weldon Johnson's added his contribution to the Harlem Renaissance with three outstanding anthologies: "The Book of American Negro Poetry" (1922), "The Book of American Negro Spirituals" (1925), and "The Second Book of Negro Spirituals" (1926). His work inspired others to be part of collections of black writing. But he did publish his own poetry in 1927 with "God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse".

Langston Hughes (1902-1967) "visited" Harlem for a period of time during the Harlem Renaissance, but did not choose to live in Harlem till 1942. He was a very "local" writer. He wrote about what he knew, not what he was told to know. "Through his poetry, novels, plays, essays, and children's books, he promoted equality, condemned racism and injustice, and celebrated African American culture, humor, and spirituality." www.americaslibrary.gov.com Interestingly, he found inspiration for the form of his poetry in the free verse of white poet Carl Sandburg (1878-1967).

Zora Neale Hurston (1891?-1960) offered a different angle to the Harlem Renaissance community of black writers. She combined literature and anthropology. Her four novels and two books of folklore are invaluable insights into Afro-American oral traditions. For her, Harlem was a spiritual concept that could be transposed/mirrored in reality elsewhere. Her "elsewhere" was Eatonville, Florida. "At age three her family moved to Eatonville, Fla., the first incorporated black community in America, of which her father would become mayor. In her writings she would glorify Eatonville as a utopia where black Americans could live independent of the prejudices of white society." http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/ hurs-zor.htm

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