Cane, Jean Toomer
Cane, Jean Toomer
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Cane

Author: Jean Toomer

Narrator: Audra McDonald

Unabridged: 5 hr 20 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/04/2023

Categories: Fiction, Classic


Synopsis

Narrated by six-time Tony Award-winning actress Audra McDonald, Jean Toomer’s revolutionary masterpiece Cane is exemplary of the era we now know as the Harlem Renaissance, and has come to be considered one of the classic works of American literary modernism. A boldly experimental “novel” mixing prose, poetry, and dramatic sketches, the book’s hallmark is its formal sophistication; sexuality, racism, and industrialization are among its major themes. Above all else it offers unforgettably evocative portraits of the African American lives Toomer encountered in rural Georgia, by turns down-to-earth, heartfelt, hauntingly lyrical.
Cover illustrated by: Laylie FrazierLaylie is a digital illustrator from Houston, Texas. She combines texture, color, and pattern to create warm and expressive portraits. She often pulls inspiration from nature, utilizing abstract plant, mountain, and sun motifs in her backgrounds. She is currently illustrating middle grade and YA covers for publishing as well as working in advertising.

About Jean Toomer

Jean Toomer (1894-1967) was born in Washington, D.C., the son of educated blacks of Creole stock. Literature was his first love and he regularly contributed avant garde poetry and short stories to such magazines as Dial, Broom, Secession, Double Dealer, and Little Review. After a literary apprenticeship in New York, Toomer taught school in rural Georgia. His experiences there led to the writing of Cane.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Tim on September 01, 2024

I read the Penguin Classics version of Jean Toomer's Cane. It has a Foreword by Zinzi Clemmons and an Introduction by George Hutchinson. Hutchinson's introduction was my favorite part of this book. It motivated me to order Hutchinson's book on the Harlem Renaissance. Right off the bat, Toomer painte......more

Goodreads review by Janet on January 29, 2015

An astonishingly beautiful, sensual, lyrical, formally experimental book. In character vignettes of one, two, three pages interleaved with short poems, Toomer explores the lives of black people, mostly in the rural south, specifically a tiny hamlet dominated by a sawmill (marked mostly by smells and......more

Goodreads review by Kevin on December 24, 2022

As a writer, Jean Toomer was an experimenter and an innovator. His style intertwines poetry and prose in such a way that one flows in and out of the other. For me, Cane reads like improvisational jazz; there is often a repetition of verse that sounds more like song than soliloquy. Nowhere is Toomer’s......more

Goodreads review by robin on March 21, 2025

Jean Toomer's Cane Jean Toomer's "Cane" (1933) is one of the lesser-known masterworks of American literature. An enigmatic figure, Toomer (1894 -- 1967) wrote "Cane" at the age of 27 and never published another novel, assuming that "Cane" itself can loosely be so described. The book frequently is des......more

Goodreads review by Octavia on April 21, 2025

Jean Toomer is an Extraordinaire author. Reading this series of vignettes is nothing like I have ever experienced with literature. Out of this entire collection, the initial 'Karintha' is motivating me to examine into it deeper; realizing that story implies Karintha turns to prostitution as revenge......more