The Harlem Renaissance and the Fine Art of Failure

This essay discusses the notion of “failure” as it relates to the Harlem Renaissance and ALH’s 100th anniversary special issue. First, I turn to the letters and writing of Dorothy West as she develops Challenge, the little magazine published during the 1930s intended to reignite and remedy the literary spirit of the 1920s’ New Negro Movement. While West and her contemporaries argue the merits of the New Negro period, I use Fire!! magazine (1926) to suggest that “failure” might have been a productive political and aesthetic strategy intended to challenge the racial, sexual, and gender norms of the New Negro Movement. Then, I explore the special issue essays written by Michelle Stephens, Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, and John K. Young, as they each examine the Harlem Renaissance’s impact on Black Studies and Literary Studies in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Overall, I argue for the productivity of “failure” as a mode of inquiry for those interested in the art and writing of the New Negro period.