Spanish Harlem

Harlem Renaissance The Harlem Renaissance, which lasted through the 1920’s and part of the 1930’s was a time when many black artists, through various artistic mediums brought to light the culture and struggles of black people during their time and in past history. One of the best known of these artists is Langston Hughes. His name even appears in pop culture references such as in the song “La Vie Bohéme” from the musical Rent. One of Hughes most famous poems is titled “I, too, sing America”. It…

Jean Toomer was a well-known writer of the Harlem Renaissance. He chose to look at the United States as a ‘melting pot’ rather than as ‘black’ or ‘white’. He also elected to view and refer to himself as an ‘American’ rather than as ‘black’ or ‘white’. These ideals were emphasized within his works. Jean Toomer’s Cane is his most famous piece. Throughout Cane, Toomer included reoccurring symbols which heightened in meaning as the book went on. Throughout “Karintha”, “Georgia Dusk” and “Blood…

jazz music into his novel that help show the expressions and cultural production of African Americans. The novel takes place in the 1920’s which was also the beginning of jazz music. Both the novel and the music’s main place during this time was in Harlem, New York. The idea of music is talked about all through out the novel. This novel shows the significance of the music jazz, and the African Americans lives and how they relate to each…

The two writers came from Harlem when there was the rise of the black voices who were against the discrimination of the African American. Their writings were mainly based on political and social affairs that were affecting the black people. However, the differences were evident in both writers on how they relayed their messages to their audience using the different styles of poetic writing. Hughes and Cullen may write different poems, but there is a close resemblance to the message being relayed…

One of the most influential African American female writers in feminism was Zora Neale Hurston. During the Harlem Renaissance, she was well known because of her unique writing style and the topics she chose to write about. Hurston’s short story called “Sweat” informed readers on feminism and shows a different perspective on African American life which was significant to her and impacts other uninformed audiences. Hurston’s works on feminism and her unique perspective on African American culture…

As I write the above poem, I reflect on my time at my first ADTA conference, the words of a Billie Holiday song, Why Not Take All of Me, come to mind. In this song, she speaks very candid about a man taking her heart due to a breakup and decides that it is best to take her life since one has taken the better part of her. For me, in this journey of therapy and Counseling, as an African American, one of my strongest assets is that I am a black man. As it is who I am, providing a very specific…

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…

“The New Negro” is a self-expression that speaks for itself meaning “a new type of negro” or black person. In the north during the Harlem Renaissance, black people were becoming independent. They started branching off making their own art, music, and poetry, and opening their own businesses and forming their own new communities. Now there was a “New Negro” as opposed to the “Old Negro”; a black man with a slave mentality. The “Old Negro” was a black man who viewed himself as inferior, the black…

However, Harlem Renaissance signified the African-American movement that emerged during the African-American struggle in the south, numerous amount of males lynchings. Therefore, cruel treatment, humiliation African-American started the massive migration to northern states signifies the African-American movement that occurred in New York. Because of the Harlem Renaissance rebirth of African-American culture connections, art, poetry, music, art forms new techniques and culture. During the history…

In the twentieth century, American poetry seemed to stagnate as the romantic genre appeared drained. Wolfgang Karrer explains poets avid to relay a different and powerful message to the American society could thus either rally the “renaissance” movement which attempted to reinvent new forms of poetry revitalizing older poetry styles or “remain with the domestic or local color realism” (130). Claude McKay decided to opt for the latest and will often use Black music and dance as a framework to…