Audiobooks by Jean Toomer

"This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice. Cane by Jean Toomer is a groundbreaking work of modernist literature that blends poetry, prose, and drama to depict the lives, struggles, and spiritual resilience of African Americans in the early 20th-century United States. Published in 1923, Cane is widely regarded as a foundational text of the Harlem Renaissance and a visionary exploration of Black identity, memory, and place. Structured in three parts, the book moves from the rural South to the urban North and back again, mirroring the Great Migration and the dislocation it created. Toomer weaves together lyrical portraits of Southern Black life—rich with spiritual symbolism, folk traditions, and natural imagery—with stark and fragmented narratives of modern urban alienation. His characters grapple with race, gender, desire, and the elusive search for wholeness in a divided America. Through its experimental form and hauntingly poetic language, Cane challenges conventional literary boundaries and elevates the experiences of Black Americans to universal significance. Its powerful vignettes—such as “Karintha,” “Becky,” and “Blood-Burning Moon”—offer intimate glimpses into complex inner lives shaped by historical trauma and cultural beauty. Both a celebration and a lament, Cane remains a profound meditation on identity, legacy, and the soul of a people. It is as innovative in structure as it is emotionally resonant, securing Jean Toomer’s place as a unique and transformative voice in American literature."

Jean Toomer (Author), Digital Voice Andrew E (Narrator)

Audiobook

70+ Anthology. African American literature. Novels and short stories. Poetry. Non-fiction. Essays:

"African American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. It begins with the works of such late 18th-century writers as Phillis Wheatley. Before the high point of enslaved people narratives, African-American literature was dominated by autobiographical spiritual narratives. The genre known as slave narratives in the 19th century were accounts by people who had generally escaped from slavery, about their journeys to freedom and ways they claimed their lives. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s was a great period of flowering in literature and the arts, influenced both by writers who came North in the Great Migration and those who were immigrants from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands. The collection includes works by such prominent masters of American literature as Frederick Douglass, Nella Larsen, Charles W. Chesnutt , Paul Laurence Dunbar, Phillis Wheatley, Langston Hughes, Booker T. Washington , W. E. B. Du Bois and many others. Novels and short stories Frederick Douglass THE HEROIC SLAVE Nella Larsen QUICKSAND PASSING THE WRONG MAN FREEDOM SANCTUARY Alice Dunbar-Nelson A CARNIVAL JANGLE VIOLETS THE WOMAN TEN MINUTES' MUSING TITEE Charles W. Chesnutt THE GOOPHERED GRAPEVINE PO' SANDY SIS' BECKY'S PICKANINNY THE DOLL THE WIFE OF HIS YOUTH Paul Laurence Dunbar THE SCAPEGOAT Jean Toomer BECKY Poetry Phillis Wheatley TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE WILLIAM, EARL OF DARTMOUTH ON VIRTUE AN HYMN TO THE MORNING AN HYMN TO THE EVENING Frances E. W. Harper BURY ME IN A FREE LAND SONGS FOR THE PEOPLE MY MOTHER'S KISS A GRAIN OF SAND OUR HERO THE SPARROW'S FALL James Weldon Johnson SENCE YOU WENT AWAY Paul Laurence Dunbar THE LESSON SYMPATHY WE WEAR THE MASK Claude McKay AFTER THE WINTER IF WE MUST DIE THE TROPICS IN NEW YORK Countee Cullen FOR PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR INCIDENT LANGSTON HUGHES THE WEARY BLUES JAZZONIA NEGRO DANCERS THE CAT AND THE SAXOPHONE (2 A. M.) YOUNG SINGER CABARET TO MIDNIGHT NAN AT LEROY'S TO A LITTLE LOVER-LASS, DEAD HARLEM NIGHT CLUB NUDE YOUNG DANCER YOUNG PROSTITUTE TO A BLACK DANCER IN 'THE LITTLE SAVOY' SONG FOR A BANJO DANCE BLUES FANTASY LENOX AVENUE: MIDNIGHT Non-fiction Frederick Douglass NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS Harriet Jacobs INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL Booker T. Washington UP FROM SLAVERY William Still UNDERGROUND RAILROAD Henry Box Brown James Hambleton Christian Theophilus Collins Seth Concklin William and Ellen Craft Abram Galloway and Richard Eden Charles Gilbert Samuel Green Jamie Griffin Harry Grimes James Hamlet and Others John Henry Hill Ann Maria Jackson and Her Seven Children Jane Johnson Matilda Mahoney Mary Frances Melvin Aunt Hannah Moore Alfred S. Thornton Essays W. E. B. Du Bois THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK Charles W. Chesnutt THE DISFRANCHISEMENT OF THE NEGRO Paul Laurence Dunbar REPRESENTATIVE AMERICAN NEGROES"

Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Booker T. Washington, Charles W. Chesnutt, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Frances E. W. Harper, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Ann Jacobs, James Weldon Johnson, Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Phillis Wheatley, W. E. B. Du Bois, William Still (Author), Jowanna Lewis, Mark Bowen, Peter Coates, Rick Walz, Shawna Wolf (Narrator)

Audiobook

Born in the USA - Exploring America in Poems - The Mid-Atlantic Poets

"Poetry. A form of words that seems so elegantly simple in one verse and so cleverly complex in another. Each poet has a particular style, an individual and unique way with words and yet each of us seems to recognise the path and destination of where the verses lead, even if sometimes the full comprehension may be a little beyond us. Through the centuries every culture has produced verse to symbolize and to describe everything from everyday life, natural wonders, the human condition and even in its more hubristic moments, the crushing triumph of an enemy. In the volumes of this series we take a look through the prism of individual regions of the United States through the centuries and decades. The United States may be many things: the world's policeman, a bully, a shameless purveyor of mass market culture but it also, in its better moments, a standard bearer for truth, transparency, equality and the more positive qualities of democracy. Little wonder that's its poets are rightly acknowledged as wonders of their art. Leading lights in the fight against slavery and for equality, even if the rest of the Nation is finding it problematic to catch up. In this volume we have collected verse from poets born in the prosaically named Mid-Atlantic region. Within its boundaries, which have never been authoritatively agreed, are New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. Therefore it is easy to wax lyrical on what, and how, our esteemed poets including Walt Whitman, Frances W Harper, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, William Carlos Williams and Herman Melville have penned in their gloried verse on the societies and lands before and around them."

Edith Wharton, Frances E. W. Harper, Henry James, Herman Melville, Jean Toomer, Joyce Kilmer, Stephen Crane, Wallace Stevens, Walt Whitman, Willa Cather, William Carlos Williams (Author), Lee Jackson, Trei House, William Marsh (Narrator)

Audiobook

Cane

"Narrated by six-time Tony Award-winning actress Audra McDonald, Jean Toomer’s revolutionary masterpiece Cane is exemplary of the era we now know as the Harlem Renaissance, and has come to be considered one of the classic works of American literary modernism. A boldly experimental “novel” mixing prose, poetry, and dramatic sketches, the book’s hallmark is its formal sophistication; sexuality, racism, and industrialization are among its major themes. Above all else it offers unforgettably evocative portraits of the African American lives Toomer encountered in rural Georgia, by turns down-to-earth, heartfelt, hauntingly lyrical. Cover illustrated by: Laylie Frazier Laylie is a digital illustrator from Houston, Texas. She combines texture, color, and pattern to create warm and expressive portraits. She often pulls inspiration from nature, utilizing abstract plant, mountain, and sun motifs in her backgrounds. She is currently illustrating middle grade and YA covers for publishing as well as working in advertising."

Jean Toomer (Author), Audra Mcdonald (Narrator)

Audiobook

Cane (Unabridged)

"This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice. Beneath the relentless Southern sun, dreams rise like sugarcane stalks, reaching for a sky fractured by longing. In 'Cane,' Jean Toomer weaves a tapestry of yearning and resilience, capturing the lives of Black Americans caught between the suffocating grip of the past and the uncertain promise of the North. Witness Karintha's innocence challenged, Carma's fight for freedom, and Kabnis's desperate search for belonging. Immerse yourself in a world where beauty and brutality entwine, revealing the complexities of identity, race, and the indomitable human spirit."

Jean Toomer (Author), Digital Voice Marcus G (Narrator)

Audiobook

Cane

"The Harlem Renaissance writer’s innovative and groundbreaking novel depicting African American life in the South and North Jean Toomer’s Cane is one of the most significant works to come out of the Harlem Renaissance, and is considered to be a masterpiece in American modernist literature because of its distinct structure and style. First published in 1923 and told through a series of vignettes, Cane uses poetry, prose, and play-like dialogue to create a window into the varied lives of African Americans living in the rural South and urban North during a time when Jim Crow laws pervaded and racism reigned. While critically acclaimed and known today as a pioneering text of the Harlem Renaissance, the book did not gain as much popularity as other works written during the period. Fellow Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes believed Cane‘s lack of a wider readership was because it didn’t reinforce the stereotypes often associated with African Americans during the time, but portrayed them in an accurate and entirely human way, breaking the mold and laying the groundwork for how African Americans are depicted in literature."

Jean Toomer (Author), Bahni Turpin, Lisa Reneé Pitts, Mirron Willis (Narrator)

Audiobook