Jean Toomer, an American playwright and novelist, grew up in a wealthy family. He was one of many Black children who attended both all-white and all-black segregated schools.
As a child, he believed that categorizing people into races was pointless. He preferred to be referred to simply as an American. According to the Poetry Foundation, he was born in Washington, D.C., and was the grandson of the country’s first African-American governor.
Despite the good life he had, he couldn’t put his finger on his sense of purpose. He attended colleges in Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Illinois, and New York, but he rejected the idea of obtaining a college degree in favor of pursuing a career as a writer.
Prior to his famous literary work, Cane, he began teaching in the fall of 1921. He was the substitute principal at Sparta Agricultural and Industrial Institute in Georgia’s Oconee River valley. According to Georgia Encyclopedia, this location was close to all of the places his estranged father had visited.
He gained a better understanding of the internal battles he had been fighting over race in Sparta. Toomer discovered what he really wanted to write about during that reawakening. From his experiences in Georgia, he wrote stories and poetry.
He discussed the lived experiences of African Americans in the south, as well as their interracial conflicts with whites. He was enraged by his experiences in Jim Crow-era agricultural towns. In 1923, his rural south experiences gave birth to his celebrated book, Cane. His ability to navigate the racial sensitivity surrounding American life and issues of racial and sexual subjects was praised by contemporary writers and critics.