Jean Toomer Publishes 'Cane'—A Landmark of American Modernism

Jean Toomer's 'Cane,' published in 1923 by Boni & Liveright, blended poetry, prose sketches, and drama to portray Black life in Georgia and Washington, D.C. with lyrical intensity. It was one of the first books to bring African American experience into the formal vocabulary of literary modernism and is considered among the most experimental and artistically ambitious works of the Harlem Renaissance. Its publication marked a turning point in Black literary ambition.