Emily Bernard is an associate professor in the English Department and ALANA U.S. Ethnic Studies Program at University of Vermont. Her books include Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She lives in Burlington, VT.
"A deeply absorbing and elegantly evoked biography of a man and his
era."—Lynell George, Los Angeles Times
*Los Angeles Times*
"Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance convincingly captures
the era and the colorful personalities who punctuated it, including
Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston and
Countee Cullen, all of whom Van Vechten befriended and
promoted."—Sam Roberts, New York Times
*New York Times*
"[Van Vechten] was undoubtedly one of the midwives of the Harlem
Renaissance, which raised the vexing question of the effects of
white patronage on that proud but short-lived cultural movement.
Emily Bernard's penetrating book confronts this issue from every
conceivable angle while writing the largely forgotten Van Vechten
back into the story. Bernard's book [is] obviously a labor of
love."—Morris Dickstein, Times Literary Supplement
*Times Literary Supplement*
"[A] landmark study of Carl Van Vechten . . . . A rich and dramatic
story that explores the 'complicated tangle of black and white,' as
well as the proclivities of a provocative and inarguably
significant player in one of America's most creative
movements."—Publishers Weekly
*Publishers Weekly*
"Deeply informed, shrewd, and convincing, Emily Bernard’s portrait
of Carl Van Vechten illuminates his colorful life as well as some
of the more shadowy but essential issues involving art, society,
and race relations in America."—Arnold Rampersad, author of The
Life of Langston Hughes
*Arnold Rampersad*
"Carl Van Vechten—a troubling, essential figure in the history of
American modernism, not to mention the history of race—has found
his best critic and champion in Emily Bernard, who takes the issues
the writer and photographer raised in his work and examines them
through the lens of a distinctly twenty-first century
perspicacity."—Hilton Als, author of The Women
*Hilton Als*
“In this absorbing and evocative book, Emily Bernard has restored
Carl Van Vechten to his rightful place in the thick of the Harlem
Renaissance. And in so doing she has created a wonderful mosaic of
relationships that brings the period before us in all its rich
complexity and allows us to see both blackness and whiteness with
new eyes.”—Rachel Cohen, author of A Chance Meeting
*Rachel Cohen*
"[A] complex biographical treatment of a significant figure in the
explosion of black arts that was centered in Harlem. . . in the
1920s and 1930s. . . Gives important contextual meaning to what
exactly the Harlem Renaissance meant to black participants and what
white promotion of black artists signified."—Brad Hooper,
Booklist
*Booklist*
“Emily Bernard moves to the front of the line of scholars who have
re-cast the Harlem Renaissance and opened up questions about the
complexity of cross-racial desire and obsession as it plays out on
the cultural front. An intrepid scholar, Bernard dives right into
the waters of racial misunderstanding, political incorrectness, and
the unfettered love that drove Van Vechten's career. This is a
passionate, dead-serious exploration of and meditation on nothing
less than negrophilia and its cultural yield. This book is a
gem, and it will be influential for many years to come.”—Elizabeth
Alexander, author of The Black Interior
*Elizabeth Alexander*
"[A] complex biographical treatment of a significant figure in the
explosion of black arts that was centered in Harlem. . . . Gives
important contextual meaning to what exactly the Harlem Renaissance
meant to black participants and what white promotion of black
artists signified."—Brad Hooper, Booklist
*Booklist*
"Bernard. . . who has devoted years to the study of the
Harlem Renaissance, delivers a semester’s worth of knowledge
in a smooth, edifying narrative. . . Van Vechten became a conduit
for works of the men and women he met in Harlem, at his
well-attended parties and through his work as a dance, theater and
music critic. . . . Bernard ably brings him to life."—Kirkus
Reviews
*Kirkus*
"Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance, as much the biography
of a book as of the man who wrote it, is an admirably sober
excursion into a field in which intoxicated opinion is rife."—James
Campbell, Wall Street Journal
*Wall Street Journal*
Read Emily Bernard's essay on her own relationship with Carl Van
Vechten on the Yale Press Log.
*http://blog.yupnet.org/2012/02/24/eminent-biography-emily-bernard-on-carl-van-vechten/*
"Bernard's portrait of the writer's Harlem Renaissance
relationships provides a more nuanced picture of him and the
intense debates he occasioned as part of his role as a patron and
artist in the 1920s. Bernard brings to life the conflicts of Van
Vechten's collaborations and creations, and also the passionate
debates about art and life that consumed him and his literary
counterparts."—D.E. Magill, Choice
*Choice*
“…[a] penetrating book…entirely convincing.”—Morris Dickenstein,
Times Literary Supplement
*Times Literary Supplement*
"Important and engrossing."—Gay City Times
*Gay City Times*
"A thoughtful reconsideration of Van Vechten's career as both a
writer and an effective champion of Negro writers."—Kalefa Sanneh,
New Yorker
*New Yorker*
"Written by a scholar who has spent years studying Van Vechten's
life and writings, this book provides a different outlook on Van
Vechten's work and his importance to the understanding of Harlem
and its artistic creations."—D.E. Magill, CHOICE
*CHOICE*
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