Toomer explores the lives of black people, mostly in the rural south, specifically a tiny hamlet dominated by a sawmill (marked mostly by smells and sounds), sugar cane fields and pines, the timeseason--autumn, the time, dusk. In fact, every story in this collection could be called 'Dusk'--with all its overtones. Though largely rural, a couple of the portraits are of city people--and though Toomer was associated with the Harlem Renaissance, the city is Washington DC, where Toomer grew up, a weird liminal zone between North and South.