Britannica Sources used in this answer

How did the Great Depression change debates about Harlem Renaissance literature?

Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

Phillis Wheatley's first book of poetry — African American literature Frontispiece and title page of *Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral* (1773) by Phillis Wheatley, the first Black woman to become a poet of note in the United States. The portrait on which the frontispiece's engraving is based is often attributed to Scipio Moorhead, an Black artist and writer who, like Wheatley, was enslaved and living in Boston.

The Great Depression significantly altered the discourse surrounding Harlem Renaissance literature by shifting the focus from the aesthetic experimentation of the 1920s toward a demand for politically engaged, socially critical realism.1

As economic conditions worsened in the 1930s, a new generation of writers and critics began to distance themselves from the previous decade’s movement. They criticized the earlier "Harlem movement" for its perceived bourgeois tendencies and its reliance on white patronage, which they argued had encouraged Black writers to seek validation from white America rather than addressing the struggles of the Black working class.2

In contrast to the earlier emphasis on personal self-expression and folk values, intellectuals in the 1930s and 1940s called for literature that directly confronted the harsh realities of American racism and economic hardship. Figures like Richard Wright became prominent for this shift, advocating for a literature that made common cause with the aspirations of the Black working class. Despite this shift in debate, many writers continued to draw upon the folk traditions and experimental techniques established by their predecessors.123