"Gather Out of Star-Dust" by Melissa Barton

Gather Out of Star-Dust A Harlem Renaissance Album Melissa Barton

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Format:: Paperback
Publication date:: 04 Apr 2017
ISBN:: 9780300225617
Imprint:: Beinecke Rare Book Library
Dimensions:: 144 pages: 241 x 216mm
Illustrations:: 140 color illus.
Sales territories:: World

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Gather Out of Star-Dust takes as its central premise that the Harlem Renaissance, known by its participants as the Negro Renaissance, relied heavily on “gatherings” of all kinds. Collaboration, friendship, partnership, and sponsorship were all central to the rise in prominence of African American publication, performance, and visual art. Most importantly, the act of collecting materials from this time subsequently enabled scholars to remember the movement. Gather Out of Star-Dust showcases fifty items from the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of African American Arts and Letters at Beinecke Library. Each of these objects—letters, journal entries, photographs, ephemera, artworks, and first editions—is accompanied by a mini-essay telling a piece of the story about this dynamic period. While numerous scholarly works have been written about this time of rebirth, this book returns us to the primary materials that have made that scholarship possible.

Melissa Barton is curator of drama and prose for the Yale Collection of American Literature, which includes the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of African American Arts and Letters, at Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.