#fire!!

Book 501

FIRE!!: Devoted to Younger Negro Artists - issue #1

Wallace Thurman, ed., in association with Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Bennett, Richard Bruce, Zora Neale Hurston, Aaron Douglas, John Davis

The FIRE!! Press 1982

Originally published in 1926, FIRE!!, a literary journal of, and for, the Harlem Renaissance was doomed from the start. But sometimes those are the best ideas. I often find that I am most impressed, most in awe of, those projects that simply have no chance. In the words of Langston Hughes, the goal of the journal was "to burn up a lot of the old, dead conventional Negro-white ideas of the past.” The editors wanted a forum where they could express the changing ideas of young African-Americans and promoted controversial ideas within the Black community, such as homosexuality, bisexuality, interracial relationships, promiscuity, and prostitution, using art, poetry, and prose that challenged the existing stylistic status quo.

A look through the first and only issue of Fire!!

This literary magazine was edited by leading young artists of the Harlem Renaissance, including Wallace Thurman, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston. Aaron Douglas created the distinctive line art that complemented the magazine’s writings.

Fire!! embraced an ethos of uncompromising Black pride and creativity, partly in response to the racist attitudes of mainstream white society, and partly in reaction to the ideals of respectability promoted by older leaders in the Black community.

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