The Blacker the Berry
First published 1929 Reading time about 4 hours
The Blacker the Berry, Wallace Thurman’s debut novel, follows the life of Emma Lou, a dark-skinned young woman from Boise, as she graduates high school and enters adult life as a college student. After being the target of colorist prejudice from her fellow African-American students at the University of Southern California, Emma Lou decides to drop out and move to Harlem—where she’s swept into a torrid love affair that only deepens her sense of color-consciousness. Written and set during the height of the Harlem Renaissance, The Blacker the Berry was one of the first African-American novels to address the themes of colorism and homosexuality. It remains one of the canonical novels of the Harlem Renaissance.
- African American women · Fiction
- Harlem (New York, N.Y.) · Fiction
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