American novelists

people would move to Harlem for a better life and more freedom. James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form called jazz poetry. Claude McKay was a Jamaican writer and poet, he moved to Harlem, and is a literary voice for social justice of African Americans. Langston Hughes and Claude Mckay both write about important values of the Harlem…

persona on this issue by enlightening her audience that the word ‘nigger’ holds many diverse meanings in different situations. The reader may automatically assume ‘nigger’ is a derogatory term used towards African Americans, but Naylor informs the audience that for African Americans it is just the opposite. It created liberation in certain racial groups that can be degraded for the color of their skin. When used in a relationship it “became a term of endearment” for the male significant…

When thinking of the American Dream, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Many people have a dream and that dream is called the American Dream. These three literature pieces have multiple things in common, but they all surround themselves with the American Dream. The Great Gatsby, The Crucible, and Of Mice and Men are all American Literature novels that portray the American Dream. In The Great Gatsby a guy named Jay Gatsby had a dream that he would end up with the love of his life. Jay…

Migration of approximately half a million African Americans from the rural south to the bustling and promising north gave way to the formation and beginning of the Harlem Renaissance-New Negro era. Within the next ten years more than 750,000 African Americans would follow which increased the black northern population by a stunning amount. This was the start of black Americans discovering and seeking new futures (Krasner). Many of these African Americans were authors, including Zora Neale…

Zora Neal Hurston was an African American novelist, and anthropologist. She mainly focused her work on the black culture and exploring her own self-identity and also helping others to do so. Surprisingly of an African American woman, she was against all of the “racial equality” and desegregation laws, because she did not believe in identifying herself with the black race (in which they explain why in further detail in the article I chose). The title of the article I chose is Zora says, Racs,…

Jean Toomer wrote for an audience composed of more than his peers. With Cane (Toomer, 1923), he reached for a black audience in search of identity. Influenced by classical poets William Blake and Walt Whitman, “stream-of-consciousness” novelist James Joyce, and novelist Sherwood Anderson’s short story collection, Winesburg, Ohio (1919), Cane also addresses a white audience receptive to the minority and mixed races that culturalist Onita Estes-Hicks refers to as “buried cultures,” as a way of…

“whiteness” of feminist theology has to do with the important development of other theologies. This enforces the fact that even though Feminist theology is a rich and vital contribution to theology, it cannot claim to speak for all women. Famous novelist, Alice Walker once said, “Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.” Womanism and feminism theologies are so alike, yet they are different. According to cbeinternational.org, one of the biggest similarities between womanism…

When Their Eyes Were Watching God was first released in 1937, there were many mixed reviews criticizing the novel. White critics received the novel as a well intimate portrait of southern blacks. While, African- American reviewers stated the novel as pandering to white audiences and perpetuating stereotypes (Telgen 300). However, for the last twenty years more attention has been put upon the novel, due to the use in many college courses across the country (Telgen 300). In Their Eyes Were…

French novelist and playwright Honore de Balzac once said, “Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.” Racism in America between 1877 to the 1930’s was an example of Balzac’s words. Although African Americans deserved to be equal socially and politically, reality showed them that the White man will always be racist. If they ever tasted success, it would be met with more racial hardships. In The Piano Lesson the fictional character’s represent the…

country is getting the same prosperity and the same rights as the middle and upper-class white Americans. Toward the Negros, ‘schools were still segregated, demonstrators were still beaten and jailed for their peaceful protests, racial discrimination was still alive in the work force and hiring practices of employees.’ (Tracee Orman) Animal Farm was written by George Orwell, a British political novelist and a writer ‘whose pointed criticisms of political oppression’ (Sparknotes). The whole…