SOURCE: “Mediating Forms: Narrating the Body in Jean Toomer's Cane, in Southern Literary Journal, Vol. 26, No. 1, Fall, 1993, pp. 42-53.

In the following essay, Whyde investigates Toomer's narrative representation of the body in Cane.

Long before Jean Toomer published his first novel, Cane, in 1923, the questions of racial definition and identification were important ones for blacks and whites alike.¹ For white Americans, the problem of the color line was primarily political. For African-Americans, however, more was at stake than just their right to vote or issues of skin color. In part, what African-Americans sought through self identification was definition and validation of their unique experience and culture, both by the dominant culture and within their own communities. To achieve this validation, African-Americans first had to become conscious of themselves as worthy to be subjects of serious art or study. Then, they had to make the more controversial choice of...