Background
She was born in Camden County, New Jersey, the daughter of Redmon Fauset, an African-Methodist-Episcopal minister, and of Annie Seamon.
(A Harlem Renaissance classic - Plum Bun tells the story o...)
A Harlem Renaissance classic - Plum Bun tells the story of Angela Murray - a young, light-skinned African American woman who decides to leave her home in Philadelphia, and head to New York City and pass for white. Soon after arriving, she gains entry into the Greenwich Village artistic scene, and begins a romance with a wealthy, but extremely bigoted, white man -- forcing her to make some harsh decisions. Written by Jessie Redmon Fauset, one of the most well-known female writers of the Harlem Renaissance, in 1928.
https://www.amazon.com/Plum-Bun-Novel-Without-Moral/dp/0991052307?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0991052307
(Set in Philadelphia some 60 years ago, There Is Confusion...)
Set in Philadelphia some 60 years ago, There Is Confusion traces the lives of Joanna Mitchell and Peter Bye, whose families must come to terms with an inheritance of prejudice and discrimination as they struggle for legitimacy and respect.
https://www.amazon.com/There-Confusion-England-Library-Literature/dp/1555530664?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1555530664
(Written in 1929 at the height of the Harlem Renaissance b...)
Written in 1929 at the height of the Harlem Renaissance by one of the movement's most important and prolific authors, Plum Bun is the story of Angela Murray, a young black girl who discovers she can pass for white. After the death of her parents, Angela moves to New York to escape the racism she believes is her only obstacle to opportunity. What she soon discovers is that being a woman has its own burdens that don't fade with the color of one's skin, and that love and marriage might not offer her salvation.
https://www.amazon.com/Plum-Bun-Novel-Without-Moral/dp/0807009199?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0807009199
( This ironically titled tale by an influential figure in...)
This ironically titled tale by an influential figure in African-American literature explores the tragic effects of color prejudice and self-hatred. Jessie Redmon Fauset's 1933 novel paints a haunting portrait of internalized racism with its depiction of a domineering mother whose determination for her children to pass as white leads to devastating results for the entire family. African-American editor, poet, essayist, and novelist Jessie Redmon Fauset (1882–1961) was a prominent figure of the Harlem Renaissance. An editor of the NAACP magazine The Crisis, she was also an editor and co-author of the African-American children's magazine, The Brownies' Book. Her fourth and final novel, Comedy: American Style, features vivid characterizations and enduring themes that continue to resonate with modern readers.
https://www.amazon.com/Comedy-American-Jessie-Redmon-Fauset/dp/0486493210?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0486493210
( Adultery, incest, and questions of racial identity simm...)
Adultery, incest, and questions of racial identity simmer beneath the tranquil surface of suburban life in this novel, set in a small New Jersey town of the early 1900s. Lovely young Laurentine is obsessed with her "bad blood," inherited from a common-law interracial union. Proud and independent, she longs for the respectability of a conventional marriage. Laurentine's vivacious and self-confident cousin, Melissa, also aspires to "marry up." But a family secret shadows Melissa's dreams and ambitions as she approaches an explosive revelation. African-American editor, poet, essayist, and novelist Jessie Redmon Fauset (1882–1961) was a prominent figure of the Harlem Renaissance. An editor of the NAACP magazine The Crisis, she was also an editor and co-author of the African-American children's magazine, The Brownies' Book. Her third novel, The Chinaberry Tree, draws upon elements of Greek tragedy in its powerful depiction of interracial love and marriage. The tale also offers a modern perspective on the struggle of its African-American heroines toward self-knowledge.
https://www.amazon.com/Chinaberry-Tree-Novel-American-Life/dp/0486493229?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0486493229
( Comedy: American Style, Jessie Redmon Fauset's fourth a...)
Comedy: American Style, Jessie Redmon Fauset's fourth and final novel, recounts the tragic tale of a family's destructionùthe story of a mother who denies her clan its heritage. Originally published in 1933, this intense narrative stands the test of time and continues to raise compelling, disturbing, and still contemporary themes of color prejudice and racial self-hatred. Several of today's bestselling novelists echo subject matter first visited in Fauset's commanding work, which overflows with rich, vivid, and complex characters who explore questions of color, passing, and black identity. Cherene Sherrard-Johnson's introduction places this literary classic in both the new modernist and transatlantic contexts and will be embraced by those interested in earlytwentieth-century women writers, novels about passing, the Harlem Renaissance, the black/white divide, and diaspora studies. Selected essays and poems penned by Fauset are also included, among them "Yarrow Revisited" and "Oriflamme," which help highlight the full canon of her extraordinary contribution to literature and provide contextual background to the novel.
https://www.amazon.com/Comedy-American-Multi-Ethnic-Literatures-Americas/dp/081354632X?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=081354632X
She was born in Camden County, New Jersey, the daughter of Redmon Fauset, an African-Methodist-Episcopal minister, and of Annie Seamon.
She attended Philadelphia public schools, where she was the only black in her class, and was the first black woman admitted to Cornell University.
She graduated in 1905, probably the first black woman to win Phi Beta Kappa honors.
In 1919, Fauset received an M. A. from the University of Pennsylvania.
She lived briefly in Paris, studying French at the Sorbonne and the Alliance Francaise. Later she continued her study of French at Columbia University.
Fauset first taught Latin and French at Douglass High School in Baltimore and then until 1919 at Dunbar High School in Washington, D. C. ; later she taught at a Harlem junior high school and DeWitt Clinton High School (1927 - 1944) in New York City.
In 1919 she accepted W. E. B. Du Bois' invitation to join the staff of the Crisis, the official publication of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), as literary editor.
In 1926 she relinquished this position and became a contributing editor. During this period she also worked as literary editor, and then managing editor, of The Brownies' Book, a monthly magazine for black children created by Du Bois.
Fauset's novels, There Is Confusion (1924), Plum Bun (1928), The Chinaberry Tree (1931), and Comedy: American Style (1933), although widely read, were not best-sellers.
She attended these historic meetings as a delegate. Although generally regarded as a minor writer, Fauset was one of the main black novelists to depict middle-class black society during the 1920's and 1930's. Like Walter White and Nella Larsen (with whom she is often compared), she represented the majority position of the black writers of the period.
Her novels used themes such as "passing, " miscegenation, the pressure of American racial prejudice, lynching, racial pride, the belief that hard work and superior achievement would eventually win equality, and loyalty to country despite differences and unfairness.
Many of the incidents and characters in Fauset's novels are based on actual persons and occurrences. Her style is stiff and self-conscious; her plots and subplots, complicated, unconvincing, and melodramatic. She overused coincidence in her story development, and at times her dialogue is stilted and wooden.
Yet she succeeded in creating some memorable female characters and provided the reading public with a truthful picture of black urban bourgeois society that whites rarely saw or even knew existed.
Robert Bone described Fauset's novels as "uniformly sophomoric, trivial and dull, " but another critic, William Stanley Braithwaite, compared her novels of prim and virtuous Negro middle-class manners and morals with the works of Jane Austen. Fauset's first novel, There Is Confusion, is probably her most representative. Its themes include the importance of heredity and genealogy, education, financial success, respectable social standing, and creative and artistic expression.
Plum Bun deals with a black girl passing as white, her eventual acceptance of her race, and her return to the black community, and The Chinaberry Tree presents an intimate picture of a small black community in New Jersey and the narrow-mindedness of blacks toward a beautiful mulatto woman.
In her last novel, Comedy: American Style, Fauset again dealt with "passing, " in a family where the mother's obsession with white identity is so great that she destroys her children, her husband--and herself. The best-known of Fauset's many poems, which mostly appeared in anthologies, are "La Vie C'est la Vie, " "Noblesse Oblige, " "Words! Words! , " "Rondeau, " "Christmas Eve in France, " and "Oriflamme, " a poem about the black evangelist Sojourner Truth.
In a few words she could combine feeling and state of mind with a pictorial scene, as in "Dusk": "Twin stars through my purpling pane, /The shriveling husk /Of a yellowing moon on the wane--/And the dusk. " Fauset's best-known essay, "The Gift of Laughter" (1925), discusses the stereotype of the black as a comic character in the American theater.
Fauset's career reflects the basic problem of black intellectuals of her day who had been assimilated into white society and had oriented their art and writing to white opinion. In her novels she presents the bitter facts of racial injustice and prejudice in so respectable and genteel a way that modern critics would likely accuse her of lacking soul.
In 1949, Fauset was visiting professor at Hampton Institute. She also taught writing and French at Tuskegee Institute.
As a leader of the black literati, Fauset held many cultural gatherings at her home in Harlem, where distinguished figures of both races gathered. She died in Philadelphia.
(Set in Philadelphia some 60 years ago, There Is Confusion...)
(Written in 1929 at the height of the Harlem Renaissance b...)
(A Harlem Renaissance classic - Plum Bun tells the story o...)
( Comedy: American Style, Jessie Redmon Fauset's fourth a...)
( Adultery, incest, and questions of racial identity simm...)
( This ironically titled tale by an influential figure in...)
Her father was an African-Methodist-Episcopal minister.
Fauset became a member of the NAACP and represented them in the Pan African Congress in 1921. After her Congress speech, the Delta Sigma Theta sorority made her an honorary member.
For many years she was considered to be the first black woman accepted to the Phi Beta Kappa Society.
In 1929 she married Herbert E. Harris, an insurance agent and businessman. They had no children.