I started learning about the Harlem Renaissance when I was a graduate student. I was drawn to the movement by the connections forged among its writers, artists, musicians, and performers. I came to understand many of its features as modernist: the innovativeness of its participants, the ways they challenged the beliefs and practices established by their elders, the ways they linked texts in various media to offer new images of African Americans and new ideas about how texts could do cultural work—or not.