author
Jessie Redmon Fauset
1882–1961
A pioneering voice of the Harlem Renaissance, Jessie Redmon Fauset combined literary ambition with a deep commitment to portraying Black life with honesty and dignity. As an editor, novelist, poet, and educator, she helped bring a new generation of African American writers to public attention.
1 Audiobook
There is confusion
by Jessie Redmon Fauset
About the author
Jessie Redmon Fauset (April 27, 1882–April 30, 1961) was an American novelist, poet, essayist, editor, and educator. Born in New Jersey, she graduated from Cornell University and went on to teach French in Washington, D.C., while continuing to write and pursue advanced study.
From 1919 to 1926, Fauset served as literary editor of The Crisis, the NAACP magazine edited by W. E. B. Du Bois. In that role, she encouraged and published writers who became central to the Harlem Renaissance, helping shape the movement’s literary culture.
Her own fiction, including Plum Bun, explored racial discrimination, feminism, identity, and the experience of “passing.” Fauset’s work centered Black characters as educated, ambitious professionals—a powerful and unusual perspective in American literature of the 1920s and 1930s.