The following version of this poem was used to create this guide: Toomer, Jean. “Reapers” Poets.org, https://poets.org/poem/reapers.

Note that all parenthetical citations within the guide refer to the lines of the poem from which the quotations are taken.

Born in 1894, Jean Toomer is an American novelist and poet critics frequently associate with the Harlem Renaissance. However, Toomer himself rejected his classification as a Harlem Renaissance and African American writer. Toomer was descended from a formerly enslaved father, and both his parents had a mixed racial background. He grew up among both black and white folks and, owing to both of his parents’ mixed racial heritage, was himself racially ambiguous and often white-passing. Toomer’s mixed background heavily influenced his rejection of the categories of “black” and “white” as racial identities – instead, he chose to identify as “American,” which signified his hybrid identity and background. These views regarding his own mixed background were especially evident in Toomer’s strong opposition to his editor’s suggestion that his novel, Cane, mention his mixed ancestry in its bibliographic materials.

“Reapers” is one of the poems in the first section of Toomer’s famous 1923 novel, Cane, which is made up of a preamble and a total of three sections. Not unlike Toomer’s own identity, Cane is hybrid in form – it consists of many smaller poems and vignettes. The last section is a dialogue with elements from theater. Therefore, critics often classify Cane as a novel or short story cycle because of its composite construction including many literary genres. This hybrid form has led many to consider Cane a Modernist work, a label also rejected by Toomer during his lifetime.