In this important new anthology, Venetria K. Patton and Maureen Honey bring together a comprehensive selection of texts from the Harlem Renaissance -- a key period in the literary and cultural history of the cultural life of the United States. The collection revolutionizes our way of viewing this era, as it redresses the ongoing emphasis on the male writers of this time. Double-Take offers a unique, balanced collection of writers -- men and women, gay and straight, familiar and obscure.

The editors have also included works from a wide variety of genres -- poetry, short stories, drama, essays, music, and art -- allowing readers to understand the true interdisciplinary quality of this cultural movement. Biographical sketches of the authors are provided and most of the pieces are included in their entirety. Double-Take also includes artwork and illustrations, many of which are from periodicals and have never before been reprinted. Significantly, Double-Take is the first book to include music lyrics to illustrate the interrelation of various art forms.

Arranged by author, rather than by genre, this anthology includes works from major Harlem Renaissance figures as well as often-overlooked essayists, poets, dramatists, and artists.

Madame Butterfly (1898) and A Japanese Nightingale (1901) both appeared at the height of fin-de-siecle American fascination with Japanese culture, which was in part spurred by the Japanese exhibits on display at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. These two novellas -- usually dismissed by literary critics and scholars because of their stereotypical treatment of Asian women -- are paired here together for the first time to show how they defined and redefined (often subversively) contemporary misconceptions of the "Orient." This is the first reprinting of A Japanese Nightingale since its 1901 appearance, when it propelled Winnifred Eaton to fame.

John Luther Long's Madame Butterfly introduced American readers to the figure of the tragic geisha who falls in love with, and then is rejected by, a dashing American man. Although Long emphasized the insensitivity of Westerners in their dealings with Asian people, the self-annihilating, ever-faithful Cho-Cho-San typified Asian subservience and Western dominance in ways that audiences continue to find appealing even today. Eaton's A Japanese Nightingale, in contrast, has been long forgotten. Yet it provides present-day readers with a fascinating counterimage of the suicidal geisha: Eaton's heroine is powerful in her own right and is loved on her own terms. Eaton's novel is also significant for its hidden personal nature. Although she wrote under the Japanese pen name of Onoto Watanna, Eaton was half Chinese. Living in a society that was virulently anti-Chinese, she used a Japanese screen for her own problematic identity.

The New Woman-an independent, nontraditional, usually career-minded woman for whom marriage and family were secondary-became a popular heroine in women's magazine fiction from the time of World War I through the 1920s. During this period, American culture entertained a new, feminist vision of gender roles that helped pave the way for modern images of women in public activity. The stories in this collection are drawn from the biggest periodicals of the day-Ladies' Home Journal, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Woman's Home Companion, and McCall's-as well as the African-American magazine The Crisis. Each story is rooted in some dimension of contemporary feminism and explores a topic of continuing importance, such as solidarity among women, the lives of women of color and working-class women, sexual harassment, lesbian love, family and marital bonds, and women's relation to paid employment. " T]hese stories are remarkable for their affirmation of a woman's independence, intelligence, self-expression, solidarity with other women and right to live life on her own terms." New York Times Book Review. "It is both an important contribution to scholarship and an engaging reading experience." Journal of Popular Culture. "Maureen Honey has retrieved a valuable chapter of America's literary history." Belles Lettres.

Creating Rosie the Riveter examines advertisements and fiction published in the Saturday Evening Post and True Story in order to show how propaganda was used to encourage women to enter the work force.

Three years before the civic-minded Carol Kennicott came to life in Main Street, Una Golden was confronting the male dinosaurs of business. Like Carol, the heroine of "The Job" is one of Sinclair Lewis's most fully realized creations. Originally published in 1917, "The Job" was his first controversial novel. A "working girl" in New York City, Una Golden--caught in the dilemmas of marriage or career, husband or office, birth control or motherhood--is the prototype of the businesswoman of popular and literary culture.