Jean Toomer

Jean Toomer was an important African American author. He worked as a poet and playwright and his work is noted for its experimentation. The latter is certainly true for his best-known form, Cane, a book about Black workers on a southern farm.

‘November Cotton Flower’ by Jean Toomer is a powerful extended metaphor for the lives of Black men, women, and children in the southern United States. It alludes to slavery and the hope that the Civil Rights Movement presented.

Portrait in Georgia

by Jean Toomer

Reapers

by Jean Toomer

‘Reapers’ by Jean Toomer is a thoughtful poem about oppression. It is depicted through a very poetic and memorable metaphor depicting field workers and a mower.