The Quarry

by Chesnutt, Charles Waddell; McWilliams, Dean

• ISBN13: 9780691059952
• ISBN10: 0691059950
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-01-01
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

Was Donald Glover really what he seemed -- a handsome, dedicated, and clever African-American star of the Harlem Renaissance, whose looks made him the "quarry" of a variety of women? Or could the secrets of his birth change his destiny entirely? Focusing on the culture of Harlem in the 1920s, Charles Chesnutt's final novel dramatizes the political and aesthetic life of the exciting period we now know as the Harlem Renaissance, Mixing fact and fiction, and real and imagined characters, The Quarry is peopled with so many figures of the time -- including Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, and Marcus Garvey -- that it constitutes a virtual guide to this inspiring period in American history. Protagonist Glover is a light-skinned man whose adoptive black parents are determined that he become a leader of the black people. Moving from Ohio to Tennessee, from rural Kentucky to Harlem, his story depicts not only his conflicted relationship to his heritage but also the situation of a variety of black people struggling to escape prejudice and to take advantage of new opportunities.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION	vii
THE QUARRY	3	(284)
NOTES	287	(10)
WORKS CITED	297