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1 results

  • Chapter 8 - “The sinful babel of the airshaft”

  • from Part III - Uplift Renewed
  • Edited by Miriam Thaggert, University of Iowa, Rachel Farebrother, Swansea University
  • Book:
    African American Literature in Transition, 1920–1930
    Published online:
    17 March 2022
    Print publication:
    07 April 2022, pp 205-231

  • Summary

    This chapter argues that previous discussions of Harlem Renaissance literature have overlooked the role of religion in shaping ideas of Black modernity. Examining the literature and art of the 1920s, Farebrother posits that religion plays a key role in shaping Black modernity, serving as the means through which Rudolph Fisher can explore anxieties about generational conflict, gender, sexuality, tradition, consumerism, and the Great Migration. Not only are there a large number of Black modernist texts that include religious scenes, but also these texts reveal the relationship between religion and entertainment, church and cabaret. Spatially, scenes of the cabaret and the church are depicted in similar ways, and the role of the spectator is significant in both church and cabaret scenes – someone who can observe the scenes and remark upon unusual elements.