J. Martin Favor is Assistant Professor of English at Dartmouth College.

“Authentic Blackness marks an advance on current work on the Harlem Renaissance. Favor’s examination of how ‘race’ as a critical concept was destabilized by Harlem Renaissance writers makes an important contribution to our thinking of the period.”-Theodore O. Mason, Kenyon College “J. Martin Favor has done the field of African American literary and cultural studies a profound service. His readings of Harlem Renaissance texts challenge our assumptions about racial identity and the ways our assumptions have shaped how we read literature by Black writers.”-Herman Beavers, author of Wrestling Angels into Song: The Fictions of Ernest J. Gaines and James Alan McPherson

• Acknowledgments vii1 Discourses of Black Identity: The Elements of Authenticity 12 For a Mess of Pottage: James Weldon Johnson's Ex-Colored Man as (In)authentic Man 253 "Colored; Cold. Wrong somewhere.": Jean Toomer's Cane 534 A Clash of Birthrights: Nella Larsen, the Feminine, and African American Identity 815 Color, Culture, and the Nature of Race: George S. Schuyler's Black No More 1116 The Possibilities of Multiplicity: Community, Tradition, and African American Subject Positions 137Notes 153Bibliography 171Index 179

J. Martin Favor is Assistant Professor of English at Dartmouth College.

“Authentic Blackness marks an advance on current work on the Harlem Renaissance. Favor’s examination of how ‘race’ as a critical concept was destabilized by Harlem Renaissance writers makes an important contribution to our thinking of the period.”-Theodore O. Mason, Kenyon College “J. Martin Favor has done the field of African American literary and cultural studies a profound service. His readings of Harlem Renaissance texts challenge our assumptions about racial identity and the ways our assumptions have shaped how we read literature by Black writers.”-Herman Beavers, author of Wrestling Angels into Song: The Fictions of Ernest J. Gaines and James Alan McPherson

• Acknowledgments vii1 Discourses of Black Identity: The Elements of Authenticity 12 For a Mess of Pottage: James Weldon Johnson's Ex-Colored Man as (In)authentic Man 253 "Colored; Cold. Wrong somewhere.": Jean Toomer's Cane 534 A Clash of Birthrights: Nella Larsen, the Feminine, and African American Identity 815 Color, Culture, and the Nature of Race: George S. Schuyler's Black No More 1116 The Possibilities of Multiplicity: Community, Tradition, and African American Subject Positions 137Notes 153Bibliography 171Index 179