There is Confusion

Jessie Redmon Fauset

May 2021 · Graphic Arts Books

About this ebook

There Is Confusion (1924) is a novel by Jessie Redmon Fauset. Published to resounding acclaim from such critics as Alain Locke and Montgomery Gregory, There Is Confusion was largely forgotten by the 1930s as the Great Depression and the Second World War shifted national attention away from the writers and artists whose vision defined the Harlem Renaissance. Rediscovered by scholars in the late twentieth century, There Is Confusion is seen as a feminist masterpiece on par with the best of Jane Austen and Edith Wharton. Set in Philadelphia and Harlem, Fauset’s novel traces the lives of three African Americans from childhood to adulthood while situating their experience in the cultural shifts of the early twentieth century. Joanna Marshall is a dancer who longs for recognition. Maggie Ellersley is a beautiful girl who detests her working-class roots. Peter Bye is an ambitious student who hopes to become a surgeon. As they grow up together, their shared dreams are tarnished by romance and competition. As economic opportunity reshapes the African American community, the three friends must redefine their relationships and desires. Moving and plainspoken, There Is Confusion is a novel grounded in history that manages a delicate balance between the personal and the political without losing sight of the characters who live Fauset’s vision. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Jessie Redmon Fauset’s There Is Confusion is a classic of African American literature reimagined for modern readers.

About the author

Jessie Redmon Fauset (1882-1961) was an African American editor, poet, and novelist. Born in Camden County, New Jersey, Fauset lost her mother and father at a young age and grew up in poverty alongside six siblings, three half-siblings, and three stepsiblings. Despite her troubled youth, she graduated as valedictorian from the Philadelphia High School for Girls before enrolling at Cornell University, where she studied classical languages and became one of the first black woman accepted to the Phi Beta Kappa Society. After receiving a master’s degree in French at the University of Pennsylvania, she began teaching at Dunbar High School in Washington, DC. In 1919, she became the literary editor of The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP, where she worked under founding editor W. E. B. Du Bois to elevate some of the leading voices of the Harlem Renaissance. In addition to her own writing, The Crisis under Fauset’s editorship published Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, Langston Hughes, and Georgia Douglas Johnson. Between 1924 and 1933, she published four novels exploring themes of racial discrimination and passing, including There Is Confusion (1924) and Plum Bun (1928). She earned a reputation as a writer who sought to capture the lives of working professionals from the black community, thereby providing a realistic portrait of her culture.