The Blacker the Berry

Emma Lou Morgan is dark-skinned, and in the world Wallace Thurman draws in 1929 that fact shapes almost everything that happens to her. Raised in a Boise family fixated on lightness, she carries the wound to college in Los Angeles and then to Harlem, where she keeps discovering that prejudice about skin color runs deep inside Black society itself, not only outside it. Thurman, a leading and often caustic voice of the Harlem Renaissance, refuses easy comfort: Emma Lou’s search for belonging leads through bad jobs, worse men, and a slow, hard-won measure of self-respect. It was among the first American novels to face colorism within the community head-on. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available here.