Harlem Renaissance

Ward assigns the Harlem Renaissance. He is feels a freedom then to carry around his volumes of Langston Hughes and Claude McKay. This feeling is further confirmed when he is caught reading 3000 Years of Black Poetry by one of this classmates, Janelle, who rather than saying something…

Langston Hughes is considered to be one of the quintessential voices of the 1920s and ‘30s Harlem Renaissance movement. Utilizing a wide range of motifs and subject matters, Hughes became a voice for working class Black Americans who were excluded from mainstream American society. In this paper I will attempt to analyze Hughes’ first published poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”. Written when he was only seventeen, the poem helped establish his reputation among African American writers, and…

As an author of the Harlem Renaissance, 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…

have not existed, but black women have existed since the beginning of time. The term may be correct because Zora Neale Hurston’s character is one that has not been searched for before. Here it is important to argue that during a time in the Harlem Renaissance when all that mattered was dealing with race — rarely gender, and never sexual identity - Janie Crawford is not a ‘new black woman’, rather she represents a black identity that continues the tradition of fighting for freedom. For Janie…

“The most important problem in America is drug abuse.”- Richard Nixon The House I Live In is an eye-opening documentary that informs people of what the war on drugs truly is. The black community has been the initial target of the war on drugs (drugs and drug abuse). This is something that is very hard for me to understand because the white community are the ones who brought the drugs over in the first place, and minorities are made to suffer. Also, higher powers put so much focus on people, that…

The Realization of Prejudice in Countee Cullen 's "Incident" The poem "Incident" written in 1920 by Countee Cullen, an African-American poet who was the leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance, tells the story of an African American man recalling the experience of a racist incident that took place in 20th century Baltimore. This short poem explores racism in a concise and potent manner. In just twelve lines, Cullen uses understatements to surface the underlying issues of racism in…

Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen were both very influential people during the Harlem Renaissance. Throughout almost all of their writings on this subject they have had conflicting views and they have given contradicting advice to African-American writers and poets. They both have their own ideas on gaining success in America through poetry. Countee Cullen gives his advice through the preface in Caroling Dusk and he advises that since these black have grown up in the English culture they don’t…

"When Sue Wears Red" was written while he was still in high school and is very well known to this day. It took a while before he wrote his first book of poetry but was quickly recognized. Langston Hughes was an influential role model during the Harlem renaissance a period of time in New York where artist, musicians and writers freely expressed their African American culture. His writings confronted African American stereotypes mainly of lower class and sought to unify African Americans by…

The Harlem Renaissance was a movement that started in New York City during World War I and continued into the 1930’s. It was an African American movement, which was also known as the “New Negro Movement”. Many African American’s were sick and tired of the way they were being treated by white Americans and used many forms of art to express and represent who they were and what was happening in their culture. The Jim Crow laws and white supremacy were becoming too much for many to handle, which is…

The Harlem Renaissance, the period in which Passing takes place, was an era of great social and artistic development for African Americans. As a result of this, themes of cultural and social issues such as race and identity are frequently explored. However, the complex relationship between Irene and Clare makes sexual desire and jealousy the central theme in Larsen’s narrative. Irene and Clare are both extremely light skinned African-American, which allows them both to pass as white. While…