America By Claude Mckay

“America” by Claude McKay puts a magnifying glass over the black population of America during the time of the 1920s—the time of the Harlem Renaissance, where black creativity was hailed and lauded by all who were lucky enough to come into contact with it. This was a time of musical ingenuity, artistic prowess, and literary mastery, all which stemmed from America’s most beaten down population. It was a time in which black Americans, Caribbean and African alike, collectively stood together to tell their country that they were still there. In the first two lines, the reader gets a sense that America, personified as female is not a warm, nurturing being as ??? expected of most women. The bread she feeds him is bitter and she “sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth, / Stealing my breath of life…” (1-3). The act of a woman feeding someone …show more content…
Though America has not treated him well, he still finds love for her. The next section of the poem delves deeper into this love he has for a maternal figure who does not treat or provide him well: “Her vigor flows like tides into my blood / Giving me strength erect against her hate.” (5-6) The narrator uses the strength that comes from simply being one of America’s children against the pain Clarify… brings to him, a What is the concept? evident throughout the history of black people in America from emancipation to the Civil Rights movement. He then goes on to compare himself to a rebel facing a king (8), suggesting that there is some monarchal or even oligarchical state implemented ?in America, though she boasts a foundation of democracy. As rebellions and revolutions go throughout history, standing solid in the face of adversity is almost necessary, and the narrator points out that he does that, not from the outside, but “within her walls with not a shred / Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.”