The Harlem Renaissance

Mark Helbling's purpose is less sweeping than his title suggests. He focuses on five Harlem Renaissance luminaries (W. E. B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Zora Neale Hurston) “who struggled... with the tension between the one and the many.” Chapter headings, however, link these black writers to white mentors, especially the anthropologists Franz Boas and Melville Her-skovits. These mentors are presented, by implication at least, as the pivotal figures of the renaissance. Du Bois is linked with the philosopher Jo-hann von Herder and Boas. Locke is connected to Boas, Herskovits, and the art historians Roger Fry and Albert C. Barnes. Toomer is linked with the writers Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Waldo Frank. Hurston is the protégé of the anthropologists Boas, Herskovits, and Ruth Benedict. Helbling is mysteriously silent on McKay's white mentors. Except in the cases of Hurston and Toomer, the attempt to subordinate black writers to white mentors is often forced

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