Plum Bun

Written in 1929 at the height of the Harlem Renaissance by one of the movement’s most important and prolific authors, Plum Bun is the story of Angela Murray, a young black girl who discovers she can pass for white. After the death of her parents, Angela moves to New York to escape the racism she believes is her only obstacle to opportunity. What she soon discovers is that being a woman has its own burdens that don’t fade with the color of one’s skin, and that love and marriage might not offer her salvation.

“An engrossing novel of women’s lives and experiences. . . . Jessie Redmon Fauset uses Angela’s development as the springboard to explore larger issues that have become regarded as central to black women’s fiction: the experience of passing, the exploitation of women as sexual objects and thus a questioning of heterosexual relationships, the assertion of racial pride, and the primacy of female bonding.” -Mary Katherine Wainwright, Belles Lettres

“A fascinating glimpse of a now-vanished Harlem culture.” -Rosalind Warren, New Directions for Women

“A reminder of how entertaining good writing can be.” -Ernest R. Mercer, East St. Louis Monitor