Harlem Renaissance Quiz

Paul Laurence Dunbar

We wear the Mask.

first great Black poet, only African American in his HS, Caricatured his own race in work such as "Uncle Toms"

Wrote about black experience

Died of TB and alcoholism

Claude McKay

Wrote "If We Must Die"

Jamaican, came to US at 22 and studied at Kansas State. Edited WL newspaper The Liberator. Became a communist and lived in Frane, Russia, and England during the 20's and 30's

Countee Cullen

"Yet Do I Marvel"

grew up in Harlem, attended NYU

published poetry in college

masters fron Harvard, married daughter of WEB DuBois but later rumored to be gay

Langston Hughes

known for choosing American folk forms: fables, spirituals, children's rhymes, blues songs

seeks to mix high and low culture in attempt to modernize art

born to mixed raced, divorced parents in Missouri

went to Columbia for a year then worked on a boat

Which two poets used poetic forms historically associated with European white people?

Countee Cullen and Claude McKay

Why didn't Hughes think that classical forms suited the work that he wanted to do?

They were molds that did not fit into his experiences

What did Hughes criticize other Black writes for?

Being too interested in white culture and white forms

What warning does Hughes communicate about withholding social equality in "A Dream Deferred"?

The American dream was denied to most African Americans. But it was "deferred," not forbidden. He is warning that if circumstances don't change there might be dangerous consequences. It suggests that withholding true equality has real risks and real costs to everyone in a social order.

what is the poem about? What is the message and meaning?

We Wear the Mask

what's it about/message/meaning

Written by Paul Laurence Dunbar

the mask is meant to hide them

the mask portrays showing one emotion but feeling another

the paradox of the poem is about how they (Black Americans) will never be seen. Wearing the mask means choosing to not be their authentic selves, yet they choose to put it back on because they want to be accepted into American society. If they would reveal themselves, they could reveal the vulnerability that could lead to further racism and oppression.

final stanza has alliteration and assonance

Themes: twoness/double Consciousness

vocab: Guile (sly, duplicity, two things happening at once)

alliteration and assonance

repeating of the first letter

repeating of a specific vowel sounds

allusion

A reference to another work of literature, person, or event

apostrophe

A specific reference to a well-known person (audience)

If We Must Die poem analysis

written in 1919 - the red summer - summer of race riots and killing of Black people

by Claude Mckay

message: don't let us die like animals that don't matter. Let us die like human beings. recognize us as human beings.

"Oh, Kinsmen!" = apostrophe, referring to family

Let us show them the bravery we already have

poem is about how terrible things are yet how powerful they could be

the resolution to the discrimination they are facing is to fight back, emphasized in last two lines of poem

theme: racial pride, new negro, because it is about having pride in being Black in America and willing to fight back to defend your pride

Yet Do I marvel

analysis

by Countee Cullen.

God is good. The mythological allusions serve to compare the eternal suffering of Tantalus and Sisyphus with the suffering of Black people in America. Sending the message that religious instruction isn't being taken as it should because people's minds are scattered and unable to accept Black people into American society. He wonders why God would make him a Black poet, so talented, yet he is Black so is work won't be as respected as that of a white person's. Why would God do such a thing?

or he could be describing that it is powerful that he has the ability to profess his poetry and God gave him that ability

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

Langston Hughes

The world is full of rivers which each carry their own history and story. his soul has deep history and connections just like the rivers of the world.

Harlem (A Dream Deferred)

a poem that suggest many possibilities about what might happen when a dream is suppressed and/or denied. The last image, "or does it explode," seems to suggest that ultimately what might occur is violence.

Cross by Langston Hughes

Themes: twoness (being white and black, not Black and American), marginality, alienation (feels alone because neither of his parents in this poem are solely Black or white)

describes his experience of being mixed race

Hughes is saying that he is composed of two opposing backgrounds: his white side, from his father, connects him with wealth and riches. His Black side, from his mother, connects him with poverty because she died in a "shack" while his father died in a "big fine house." He feels lost being mixed race because he can't pinpoint aspects of his identity to one race or another. He doesn't know which one he should associate himself with, or how people see him, white or black.

I, Too by Langston Hughes

I, too, sing America...

I, too, am America.

He is saying that he is just as American as all of his white brothers and sisters, and they all makeup America together. "Tomorrow" is a time when white and black people will be integrated, and he can eat with them at the same table, without being hidden from guests. This implies he is hopeful for the future.

Calls himself beautiful because one day, when they see him for being a human and not a Black man, they will realize he looks like them, and therefore is beautiful, because he is human. They will be ashamed that they rejected their own people for so long. I am the darker "brother" shows how they are all family even though the white people can't see it yet.

Key themes

alienation, marginality, use of folk material and the blues tradition, the New Negro (racial pride), modernism and modernity, imagining Africa, race in America, double consciousness ("Twoness")

Harlem Era

1920s-30's

blossoming of African American literature, art, and Music in NYC

occurred between the end of WWI and the start of the Great depression

Harlem became a symbol of African American optimism

The great migration

movement of over 300,000 African American from the rural south into Northern cities between 1914 and 1920

Harlem Renaissance legacy

Redefined how America viewed African Americans

Impact on America's entertainment industry

Impacted America's robust cultural identities - art benefitted from the contributions of African Americans

Black pride and the civil rights movement kickstarted

metaphor and simile

compares two different things by speaking of one in terms of the other. Unlike a simile or analogy, metaphor asserts that one thing is another thing, not just that one is like another.