Frieda Hughes

“Call them from their houses, and teach them to dream.” - Jean Toomer. The Harlem Renaissance is a period of time spanning from the Roaring Twenties through the Great Depression, but it is more than a period of time, it was way of life. During this renaissance, black culture evolved, and broke the mold of blacks being less than whites intellectually, musically, and socially. The Harlem Renaissance is undoubtedly the most important era in Black arts, literature, society, and science. Rebirth of…

in significant numbers to urban centers in the North, namely New York’s Harlem. For the Blacks to feel secure, they lived together in groups, thus forming Black neighborhoods. Out of these towns and era came many art influencers, such as Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, and Zora Neale Hurston. Their work transformed into the today known American and African American culture. Johnson remains conflicted about his racial identity due to his half white and half black ethnicity. This battle in one’s…

Africans didn't speak up about this, but some did. From reading 'mother to son' written by Langston Hughes we can make an assumption that the poem is about a mother who is telling her son to stay strong and preserving in the life of adversity. Being in America during the times of segregation was really hard for African Americans, and it's something we don't understand. But from reading a Langston Hughes poem we can get an idea of how it was like for them. From reading the poem we can tell…

“My black face fades, hiding inside the black granite.” An African American wrote “Facing It”, by Yusef Komunyakaa. Facing It, is a poem that is talking about being strong, war, black wall, names, and Vietnam Veteran. What’s he facing? Why is looking at the black wall with thousands of names on it so hard? Why is he holding back tears? When he could just face it? Being strong is not always good. While Komunyakaa, takes us on a journey about him being strong, being a vet, the sky, changing the…

Langston Hughes was an African American writer born in the early 20th century. He became a well-known and important author by discussing themes concerning race and politics from a young age in various genres, for example poetry. In a varying degree of colloquial language and a jazz inspired rhythm, Hughes conveyed his messages to his audience through a lifetime long career of writing that began around the time he published the poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” which in this essay will be…

Langston Hughes, “Harlem”, both of them talk about the times of the brutality over African American people. The two works are similar because they both talk about African Americans not having the right of freely expressing their dissatisfaction with oppression. However, the two works are different in that one has a message with hope and the other one is without any optimism. These works have similarities with expressing their ideas and frustration with African American dreams. The author Hughes…

Textual Response Racially driven stereotypes have been around forever, especially where African-American males are concerned. Most likely you know a few yourself. However, in "Who Shot Johnny?" Debra Dickerson provides her insight, as to why she thinks Black men are stereotyped as criminals. Similarly, Brent Staples tackles the same issue in his piece titled, "Black Men and Public Space." While Staples and Dickerson touch on the same topic; each takes on the subject from a different perspective…

In 1831, at the age of twelve, Walt Whitman began working for his local newspaper. He soon fell in love with the written word and started writing his own poetry (“Poet Walt Whitman”). Fast forward to the turn of the 20th century, and Whitman has already made a name for himself as one of America’s most influential poets. Two of Whitman’s most esteemed works are “O Captain! My Captain!”, written in 1865 to reflect on Abraham Lincoln's death, and “O Me! O Life!”, written in 1891 to contemplate…

Perhaps more so than other periods of prolific artistic change and growth, the era now understood in terms of the “New Negro” movement reveals a complexity of race relations, gender struggles and class divisions, particularly among African Americans than any other subsequent decade. In truth, the level of popularity of this period has fluctuated over time, and many of the writers, especially women, we now associate with the Harlem Renaissance were not recognised in mainstream literary circles…

The Soul of Black Folk written by W.E.B. Du Bois is a groundbreaking work in the African American literature. In addition, it is also a American classic. In this book Du Bois outlines that “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem that lies with the color line.” His outlooks on life hidden behind the veil of race and also the idea of “double-consciousness, just the idea of looking at one’s self through the eyes of others.” Becoming touchstones to think about the idea of race in…