His life cut short by tuberculosis at 32, Wallace Thurman left a brilliant legacy. As a leader of Harlem's younger generation of intellectuals, salonnière to its literary and artistic avant-gardes, editor of the provocative, short-lived quarterly Fire!!, and author of novels, stories, poems, plays, and criticism, he helped to instigate and express the creative ferment that came to be known as the Harlem Renaissance.

Library of America presents a classic novel of the Harlem Renaissance: Wallace Thurman's anguished, provocative look at prejudice and exclusion in Jazz Age Harlem.
The Blacker the Berry (1929), Wallace Thurman's debut novel, broke new ground as an exploration of issues of "colorism," intra-racial prejudice, and internalized racism in African American life. Its protagonist, the young Emma Lou Morgan, is simply "too dark" for a world in which every kind of advancement seems to require a light complexion. Seeking acceptance and opportunity, she moves--much like the dark-skinned young Thurman had, four years before the novel's publication--from Idaho to California to New York. Harlem, the "city of surprises," is in many ways the novel's true subject, its low-down, licentious streets, glittering cabarets, and variegated cast of characters offering a rich backdrop for Emma Lou's ambivalent, picaresque progress.