Toomer is a major figure of the Harlem Renaissance. According to the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, this is a “term in which Harlem [...] stands for the variety of outposts of African-American cultural production in the United States and abroad.” Toomer’s Cane was originally published at the height of this literary movement. It reflects Toomer’s experiences living not only in New York (the home of Harlem) but also in Georgia. Many scholars describe Toomer as part of the Harlem Renaissance project of “championing Black artistic production as a way of attaining full rights and participation in American society” (Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. 2012. Princeton University Press).

Toomer was praised by W. E. DuBois and inspired many Black authors. According to Arna Bontemps’s article “The Negro Renaissance: Jean Toomer and the Harlem of the 1920s,” Toomer influenced his contemporaries “Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Eric Walrond, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Rudolph Fisher” and more (Cane. 1988. Norton Critical Edition). Langston Hughes himself “has recalled that the Renaissance writers studied [Cane] assiduously,” Darwin T. Turner writes in his introduction to the 1975 edition of Cane (Cane). Furthermore, Toomer’s structuring of Cane can be compared to his contemporary, Langston Hughes.