A selective list of online literary criticism for the American novelist, playwright, and poet Jean Toomer, favoring signed articles by recognized scholars, articles published in peer or editor reviewed sources, and web sites that adhere to the MLA Guidelines for Authors of Web Sites
main page | African American writers | Harlem Renaissance | 20th-century literature | 20th-century novel | 20th-century poetry
Banks, Kimberly. "Like a violin for the wind to play": lyrical approaches to lynching by Hughes, Du Bois, and Toomer." [Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois] African American Review, Fall, 2004
Byrd, Rudolph P. "Invisible Darkness: Jean Toomer and Nella Larsen." African American Review, Spring, 1996
Doreski, C.K. To Make a New Race: Gurdjieff, Toomer, and the Harlem Renaissance, African American Review, Summer, 2001
Dow, William. "'Always your heart': the 'great design' of Toomer's Cane. MELUS, Winter, 2002
Fike, Matthew A. Jean Toomer and Okot p'Bitek in Alice Walker's "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens," MELUS, Fall-Winter, 2000
Foley, Barbara. "'In the land of cotton': economics and violence in Jean Toomer's Cane." African American Review, Summer, 1998
Griffiths, Frederick T. "'Sorcery is dialectical:' Plato and Jean Toomer in Charles Johnson's 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice.'" African American Review, Winter, 1996
Jones, Robert A. Jean Toomer and the Prison-House of Thought (Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1993). Reviewed in African American Review, Spring, 1996 by George Hutchinson. Another review in MELUS, Spring, 1997 by Frederik L. Rusch
Jones, Robert A. Jean Toomer: Selected Essays and Literary Criticism. Reviewed in African American Review, Fall, 1998 by Kathleen Pfeiffer
Kodat, Catherine Gunther. To "Flash White Light from Ebony": The Problem of Modernism in Jean Toomer's Cane. Twentieth Century Literature, Spring, 2000
Pardlo, Gregory A. The Trick of Transcending Race Black Issues Book Review, Jan, 2001
Rusch Frederick L, ed. A Jean Toomer Reader: Selected Unpublished Writings (Oxford University Press, 1993). Reviewed in African American Review, Spring, 1996 by Rudolph P. Byrd
Scruggs, Charles. Jean Toomer and the Harlem Renaissance. African American Review, Spring, 2002
Scruggs, Charles. "The Reluctant Witness: What Jean Toomer Remembered from Winesburg, Ohio." [Sherwood Anderson] Studies in American Fiction, 22-MAR-00
Scruggs, Charles and Lee VanDemarr. Jean Toomer and the Terrors of American History (Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1998). Publisher's web site
Overview of Jean Toomer in the Heath Anthology of American Literature. "Toomer was a gifted artist who turned his back on what might have been a brilliant writing career for a principle regarding the meaning of race in America. For this reason, his life and work remain especially interesting to scholars."
An introduction to Jean Toomer plus excerpts of reputable critical discussions of some poems, from the Modern American Poetry Site (Univ. of Illinois)
main page | African American writers | Harlem Renaissance | 20th-century literature | 20th-century novel | 20th-century poetry
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