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The Issue of the ‘New Negro’ literature, Recovery of Blackness.” Studies in English Language & Literature 39.2 (2013): 59-80. This study aims to discuss the recovery of blackness that the ‘New Negro’ writers explored as their main literary issue. The writers, such as Charles Chesnutt of the post-Reconstruction era, and then Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston of the Harlem Renaissance era, try to explore and recover African Americans' unique blackness in terms of racial identity, politics, and culture. More specifically, McKay contributes to the recovery of blackness in his political exploration, and the other writers do this in terms of their cultural exploration. However, they all proceed to interrogate the twin doctrines of white supremacy and anti-black racism in mainstream American literature. They seek to create more self-awareness among black people. Additionally, their ardent wish for the racial uplift is a source of inspiration and angst. They seek to prove that African Americans can be uplifted politically, morally, intellectually, and culturally. Especially, Hughes and Hurston make a great deal of contribution to recovery and recreation of black cultural forms. Using these forms, they seek to voice communal identity, maintain traditional values, protest racial inequalities, express desires for self-definition, encode messages, pass on collective wisdom, and resist and subvert dominant power structures.