Spanish Harlem

Tennessee Williams was born in Columbus, Mississippi on March 26, 1911 (Biography.com). He won a Pulitzer Prize for his works, including A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Tin Roof. A Streetcar Named Desire, written in 1947, is the play that gave Williams his first Pulitzer Prize (Biography.com). The main characters in that play are Blanche Dubois, her younger sister Stella, and Stella’s husband Stanley Kowalski. Blanche Dubois has unexpectedly come to live with her sister because she…

The Harlem Renaissance was the first pro-black movement that was not criticized or shamed upon by whites. It was the upcoming of African Americans' heritage after slavery. It also outlined the bravery of blacks, the conquering of oppression, and the presence of individuality during the 1920s. It transformed black culture as a whole and is worthy of recognition throughout history. This was the turning point in African American heritage in America , celebrating black culture. Coming from slavery ,…

writers who have been interested in the cause of the cultural emancipation of the African Americans. They also had a stand against the slavery system and the unjust American society. Resultantly, that Harlem became the sacred place of the Negro and the center of the black community in America. The Harlem community becames the center and the Godfather for African American people. Many stories of protest and struggle were written by writers and black critics, some of them autobiographical…

Introduction Harlem Renaissance was a period in history from 1918 to 1930. During this period, there was a literary and intellectual flowering of great cultural, economic and identity assertion among African Americans (Rowen and Brunner, 2007; Rhodes, nd). This great period strong artistic and intellectual movement of African Americans was characterized by the wave of literary works centered on Negroes, which means that some of the works were written by them, or some of the works were all about…

“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…

“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…

past times African American people were discriminated against and segregated, making a lot of people stand up for their rights in different ways. The speech written by Martin Luther King, “I have a dream” and the poem written by 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,…

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…

“La raza! / Méjicano! / Español! / Latino! / Chicano! / Or whatever I call myself / I look the same / I feel the same / I cry / And / Sing the same. / I am the masses of my people and / I refuse to be absorbed. / I am Joaquín” (Gonzales, 1969). These powerful words were taken from Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales’s, poem “I am Joaquin”, which revolutionized the definition of “Chicano” in the late 1900’s. Although many are challenging the traditional definition of Chicano social identity as it was seen…