Kevin Anthony Brown (1960–)

An author I met on Bluesky. This is a collection of essays on the Harlem Renaissance and his personal connection to it. Countée Cullen (pronounced count-ay, with a long 'a') was a leading poet of what became known as the Harlem Renaissance. He was first published very young, with a classical style. Later he would become a schoolteacher in New York and advise a middle-school-aged James Baldwin not to pursue poetry, as it doesn't sell and is poorly understood. He married this author's show more maternal grandmother, and through this grandmother, the author, born in 1960, met many artists who had been part of this movement, or were influenced by it.

I enjoyed getting a little immersed in this world. I don't know that much about the Harlem Renaissance. I didn't know it was not simply local to Harlem-centered, but spread along the black south-to-north migration lines, including especially Harlem and Washington, D.C. but also other northern industrial towns. I didn't know it was so dependent on white sponsorship, where it was a fad, white audiences suddenly very interested in what black artists were creating in the 1920's. There were, for example, no major black-owned publishers available to promote these authors. Although there were several important black magazines and newspapers. Still, the fad faded with the Great Depression, and the artists saw their national prominence and income fade. They still produced and influenced art going forward. The list of prominent authors that were part of this movement include Countée Cullen, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Alain Locke, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, and several others. James Baldwin can be since as child of this movement. Maybe all prominent black American authors can be seen in one way or another as being heavily influenced by it, including especially Richard Wright, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. Parallel to the literature were the visual arts and the development of music styles. One essay is devoted to Delta Blues musician Robert Johnson, whose two recording sessions in the 1930's have become a sort of foundation stone for much of our contemporary music.

I enjoyed the book and have several new names and titles to pursue, and new contexts in which to pursue them.

2026
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I wish I could cut this book a little more slack with at least two stars, but I just can't. I am a fan of Romare Bearden and I love reading about and looking at art. What I do not appreciate is a book that assumes as much, if not more, than it knows. Kevin Brown has written a youth oriented account of the life and art of Romare Bearden, an artist whose fame flourished in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Bearden’s most popular work consists of collages he did “to paint the life of my people as show more I know it” (14). Although a person walking by him on the street would probably think him to be Russian or German with his pale skin, light hair, and hazel eyes, he was actually of mixed descent combining African-American, Italian, and Native American. As man of mixed descent, he painted the life he knew, that of African-Americans in both rural and urban settings. He grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and finally settled in New York City. From his wide range of experiences of the African-American community during the formative years of the Jim Crows laws to the Civil Rights Movement he painted and collaged a body of work that surpasses mere experiences and places it in the realm of great art which speaks to “only one art, and it belongs to all mankind” (14).

Such great art should be given an arena, when writing a biography, which pays homage to the man as well as his products but keeps in mind the gifts of non-fiction. Non-fiction allows us readers to experience the world of the subject and explains their contribution to society without falling into the realm of fiction by imagining the circumstances of the life or what the subject or subjects were thinking, or making grandiose, adjective laden accounts that do not follow the reality of life. I am sorry to say that I was disappointed in the effort of the writer in attaining this approach to a person’s life. Although Brown adhered to the formula of biography by giving us a glimpse of the artist’s greatest triumph, in this case Bearden’s black and white collages of the 1960’s, and then went on to describe his earliest years to his death, I felt a sort of animosity to the writer because he used clichéd terms and imagined situations for so much of the writing. For example, when Brown is describing the Bearden’s process of painting, something no one saw since the artist would not allow it, he writes, “If art was his love, then music was his mistress” (14) as he described him listening to jazz as he painted. Such overly effusive writing pock marks the entire book.

And clichés abound. I can only think that the author meant to make the writing more immediately comprehended by a young audience and thought that often heard clichés would draw the reader. When writing again about the art process Brown wrote, “It was not always smooth sailing” (17). I could write a diatribe on the amount of clichés I found in this book, but I won’t. They only succeeded in making the book trite in my opinion, and a book about such a great artist shouldn’t fall into that category.

The pictures, I admit, were the best part of the book. They were reproductions of Bearden’s art as well as pictures of his family and of the tumultuous times he lived through. The colorful glossies from page 49 to page 56 are especially lovely in that they show the colors in which the artist worked in through a period of his life.

If you are looking for a great way to introduce Romare Bearden than I would suggest Ruth Fine’s photographic account called Romare Bearden or Ruth Fine’s The Art of Romare Bearden. Both of these accounts will give elementary to high school aged students a wonderful entre into the world of the artist and can be used in the art class for inspiration when creating collages. Or in literature classes they could be used to marry artwork with literature. I would suggest using poems of the Harlem Renaissance that mirrors the chaotic symmetry of jazz music with words as Bearden’s work offers us jazz as painted art. show less