Infants of the Spring

" T]his delightful roman a clef about the Harlem Renaissance reflects . . . many of the competing notions of its time -- between the masses and individuality, between art and uplift, between civilization and primitivism, between separatism and assimilation." -- Kirkus Reviews

This minor classic of the Harlem Renaissance centers on the larger-than-life inhabitants of "Niggerati Manor," an apartment building modeled on the rooming house where the author once lived among other celebrated black artists and writers. Enlivened by characters based on Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Alain Locke, Wallace Thurman's rollicking novel satirizes the cultural confusion surrounding a golden age of African-American art and literature.

Infants of the Spring was originally published in 1932 -- shortly after the author's ground-breaking novel on interracial prejudice, The Blacker the Berry, and two years before his untimely death. Thurman's elegant prose and witty characterizations offer revealing insights into conflicts within the African-American artistic community as well as the struggle to maintain artistic integrity.