Georgia Douglas Johnson (1877-1966) was the most prolific female writer of the Harlem Renaissance. Born as Georgia Blanche Douglas Camp in 1877 in Atlanta, Georgia, Johnson devoted much of her artistic imagination to indexing African American women's interior life and advancing the means through which to achieve interracial cooperation. After a Thousand Tears represents the only extant poetry collection that Johnson authored between 1928 and 1962, and it illustrates her more nuanced and transgressive prescription for gender, racial, and national advancement. Although scholars have critically examined Johnson's four previously published collections of poetry (The Heart of a Woman [1918], Bronze [1922], An Autumn Love Cycle [1928], and Share My World [1962]), they have never engaged After a Thousand Tears. Jimmy Worthy II located the unpublished work while conducting archival research at Emory University's Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library. Worthy discovered that while Johnson intended to publish Tears with Padma Publications of Bombay in 1947, the project never came to fruition. Published now, for the first time, this volume features eighty-one poems that offer Johnson's intimate and forthright sensibility toward African American women's lived experiences during and following the Harlem Renaissance.

After a Thousand Tears: Poems (Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory University Publications)

Literature & Fiction

Johnson, Georgia Douglas

Poetry

University of Georgia Press

Bronze: A Book of Verse (Black Narratives)

Bronze (1922) is a collection of poetry by Georgia Douglas Johnson. As Johnson's second published volume, Bronze is an invaluable work of African American literature for scholars and poetry enthusiasts alike. Comprised of some of Johnson's best poems, and graced with a foreword by W.E.B. Du Bois, Bronze showcases her sense of the musicality of language while illuminating the experiences of African American women of the early twentieth century."Don't knock at my heart, little one, / I cannot bear the pain / Of turning deaf-ear to your call / Time and time again!" This poem, titled "Black Woman," contains the tragic lament of a woman for whom motherhood would mean exposing her child to the cruelties of a racist world. "You do not know the monster men / Inhabiting the earth. / Be still, be still, my precious child, / I must not give you birth." Far from denying life, this black woman knows that the life of a black child would be precious only to her, and that she would lack the ability to defend her "little one" from violence and hatred. Despite this bleak vision, Johnson also foresees a time of peace, a world in which "All men as one beneath the sun" will live "In brotherhood forever." Throughout this collection, Johnson shows an efficiency with language and ear for music that make her an essential, underappreciated artist of the Harlem Renaissance. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Georgia Douglas Johnson's Bronze is a classic of African American literature reimagined for modern readers.

United States

Mint Editions

The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems (1918) is a collection of poetry by Georgia Douglas Johnson. Marking Johnson's debut as one of the leading poets of the Harlem Renaissance, The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems is an invaluable work of African American literature for scholars and poetry enthusiasts alike. Comprised of Johnson's earliest works as a poet, the collection showcases her sense of the musicality of language while illuminating the experiences of African American women of the early twentieth century. "The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn, / As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on." Recalling Paul Laurence Dunbar's classic poem "Sympathy," which immortalizes the African American experience with the line "I know why the caged bird sings," the title poem of Johnson's collection compares the heart to a bird. Musical and dreamlike, Johnson's poem envisions "the heart of a woman" as it "enters some alien cage in its plight, / And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars / While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars." With each repetition of "breaks," the reader can feel the restlessness and fear of the bird as it beats its wings against its cage, the heart as it beats against the "sheltering bars" of the ribs. In this poem, and throughout the collection, Johnson shows an efficiency with language uncommon to many poets, let alone one making her debut. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Georgia Douglas Johnson's The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems is a classic of African American literature reimagined for modern readers.

The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems (Black Narratives)

Bronze (1922) is a collection of poetry by Georgia Douglas Johnson. As Johnson’s second published volume, Bronze is an invaluable work of African American literature for scholars and poetry enthusiasts alike. Comprised of some of Johnson’s best poems, and graced with a foreword by W.E.B. Du Bois, Bronze showcases her sense of the musicality of language while illuminating the experiences of African American women of the early twentieth century.“Don’t knock at my heart, little one, / I cannot bear the pain / Of turning deaf-ear to your call / Time and time again!” This poem, titled “Black Woman,” contains the tragic lament of a woman for whom motherhood would mean exposing her child to the cruelties of a racist world. “You do not know the monster men / Inhabiting the earth. / Be still, be still, my precious child, / I must not give you birth.” Far from denying life, this black woman knows that the life of a black child would be precious only to her, and that she would lack the ability to defend her “little one” from violence and hatred. Despite this bleak vision, Johnson also foresees a time of peace, a world in which “All men as one beneath the sun” will live “In brotherhood forever.” Throughout this collection, Johnson shows an efficiency with language and ear for music that make her an essential, underappreciated artist of the Harlem Renaissance. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Georgia Douglas Johnson’s Bronze is a classic of African American literature reimagined for modern readers.\nFrom the Back Cover\n“The spirit soars aloft where rainbows lie.” In Bronze, her second collection of poems, Georgia Douglas Johnson reflects on the experience of African American women in the early twentieth century. Celebrated for her lyrical brilliance, Johnson is a poet of the Harlem Renaissance whose meditations on motherhood, religion, and race are presented with her unique sense of the musicality of language.

The Carolina Magazine: "Negro Number" May 1928 (Subscription to the Harlem Renaissance)

HUGHES, Langston

Fauset, Jessie Redmon

Johnson, Charles S.

Bontemps, Arna

Dunbar-Nelson, Alice

Locke, Alain

Grimke, Angelina W.

Levine, Karen Rae

Cuney, Waring

Independently published

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