Literature and Anthology
During his six-year stay in Hispanic America he completed his most famous book The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, which was published anonymously in 1912. It was only during 1927 that Johnson admitted his authorship, stressing that it was not a work of autobiography but mostly fictional. His other works include The Book of American Negro Spirituals (1925), Black Manhattan (1930), his exploration of the contribution of African-Americans to the culture of New York, and Negro Americans, What Now? (1934), a book advocating civil rights for African Americans. Johnson was also an anthologist. His anthologies concerned African-American themes and were part of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. He also wrote the melody for the song "Dem Bones".
Read more about this topic: James Weldon Johnson
Famous quotes containing the words literature and/or anthology:
“If a nation’s literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“You’ve strung your breasts
with a rattling rope of pearls,
tied a jangling belt
around those deadly hips
and clinking jewelled anklets
on both your feet.
So, stupid,
if you run off to your lover like this,
banging all these drums,
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—Amaru (c. seventh century A.D.?, Kashmirian king, compiler, author of some of the poems in the anthology which bears his name. translated from the Amaruataka by Martha Ann Selby, vs. 31, Motilal Banarsidass (1983)