All American Poem

Because of McKay's mom teaching him respect and honor for himself, Mckay could not sleep on this issue that was not just impacting the Harlem community, but HIS community. He cared so much for women, and his community that he wrote a poem about his opinion on the young women giving a national perception of themselves in that community that made Harlem and the African American community look like they were uneducated, ignorant, and unattached from themselves. With the help of McKay and many other Harlem poets and activist, they changed the perception of the African American and Harlem one poem, song, and act at a time.

Born in Senegal around 1753, Phillis Wheatley became an important American poetic figure. At the age of 8, she was kidnapped and brought to Boston on a slave ship and upon her arrival to Boston, she was quickly sold to John Wheatley (Bio). Under her new family, Phillis adopted the master’s last name, taken under the wife’s wing, and showed her deep intelligence. Even though suffering from poor health, Phillis’s intelligence did not go unnoticed; she received lessons in theology, English, Latin and Greek. Being a slave did not stop Phillis from learning and experiencing her life, she participated in the master’s family events and eventually became a family member. The irony in this situation is

The similarities between the 3 poems are talking about America, Imagery , and work of the people. In Ángela de Hoyos’ poem “To Walt Whitman” line 3 states “ prophet democratic” telling the type of government America is. Walt Whitman talks about America with “ I HEAR America singing” and Hughes states “ I, too, sing America.” The subject of the poems can be considered America, because of the authors’ experiences. Imagery can be clearly seen in Walt Whitman’s poem by the type of work used to describe the job with a sound. Then De Hoyos talk about a “-a Chicana guitar-,” which is used to play traditional music and Whitman

Claude McKay’s poems reflect on American culture during a specific time in history, known as Harlem Renaissance. A time where racism was predominately a way of living for many, this was a beneficial time in history for African Americans. Bringing blacks together in a new movement that had not been present in America. Development in which blacks emphasized themselves by taking on their racial identity. It was a time period in which the black community helped each other to be able to express themselves as who they truly are, creating a true African American visual doing so

Throughout the course we have learned how to read and interpret poetry with a better understanding of the mechanics that power the poem. Tone, pace, rhyme scheme, theme, and other various components within a poem develop an understanding of the work allowing for critical analysis. By reading poetry comprehending its various nuances and being able to reflect on the period of which it is written, provides a view into the past. Using culture, economics, and race are all factors that influence the writer and may even be the theme of the poem. A poem that had caught my eye recently, All-American Sestina although written in 1940, contains some of the issues that we are faced with today. It will be intriguing to consider the past before the united states entered world war two and examine how the author perceived the country at the time and how these matters have shaped over the course of 77 years.

McKay stressed the value of the common Negro and joined other Negro Renaissance writers in a rediscovery of Negro folk culture. For in his poetry, he best expressed the New Negro's determination to protect his human dignity, his cultural worth, and his right to a decent life. After working closely with Max Eastman, he traveled to Moscow in 1923 in sympathy with the Bolshevik Revolution and became a sort of national hero there. Claude McKay died in 1948.

Claude McKay is one of the important writers that were brought into the spotlight as a result of the Harlem Renaissance. Some other very important and undisputed personalities from the Harlem Renaissance include the likes of Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer and Zora Neale Hurston. Claude McKay was often regarded as an outcast for his strong opinions against what he thought were political and social injustices. McKay brought to the Renaissance Movement the need and demand for justice for people of every color, race, gender, and sexual orientation. After reading more about Claude McKay, it became obvious that McKay was a very vocal activist that made his views public through his writing. He criticized everything he thought was wrong, including Harlem itself. He spoke about both the beautiful aspects of Harlem and the not so wonderful aspects of the neighborhood that made him a very controversial figure in American literature. He took the side of the weak when nobody else did. Although McKay was often villainized for his outspokenness; he has gone down in history as an exceptional historical figure that said what no one wanted to say and stood up for the weak and defenseless. He is an underrated social reformer. McKay’s ideas became increasingly attractive to many African American youth. Change became a possibility and hope was sparked through Claude McKay’s writings.

Claude McKay was born on September 15, 1889, in Sunny Ville, Jamaica. Festus Claudius McKay, better known as Claude McKay, was one of the key figures in the Harlem Renaissance, a prominent literary movement of the 1920s. He was born to peasant farmers; he was infused with racial pride and a great sense of his African heritage. His early literary interests, were in English poetry. Under the tutelage of his brother, Walter Jekyll, McKay studied the British masters-including John Milton, Alexander Pope, and the later Romantics-and Europeans philosophers such as eminent pessimist Arthur Schopenhauer, whose works Jekyll was then translating from German into English. It was Jekyll who advised aspiring poet McKay to cease mimicking the English poets and begin producing verse in Jamaican dialect. At seventeen McKay departed from Sunny Ville to apprentice as a woodworker in Brown’s Town. He studied there briefly before leaving to work as a constable in the Jamaican capital,

The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,

While reading the chapter, “The matter of whiteness” by Richard Dyer, I found myself relating to almost every aspect of his experiences and thought processes. I am a gay/sexually ambiguous female who more strongly identifies/feels a kinship with Mexicans than with whites. I also live in a lower-middle class neighborhood where the majority demographic is black, and I feel more at ease there than when I am in an affluent, white area of town. However, I would argue it might be the affluence that bothers me more than the race. Regardless, I spent a fair amount of time in Mexico in my late teen/early twenties, and discovered that I adored the culture and the people. Dyer speaks of a “tightness” and “self-consciousness” he associated with being white while trying to dance in a black club (6).

Claude McKay was a Jamaican poet who brought hopefulness to the oppressed during the Harlem Renaissance in his poem, “If We Must Die”. McKay experienced the hardships that colored people were going through because of their race and nationality. He believed that the people should fight for what they believe in, even if it seems like a hopeless cause. McKay uses the concept of dying with dignity to persuade his fellow African-Americans that are being oppressed to fight for what they believe in.

The views expressed by King and Hughes are similar because they both want America to be a free and civilized country. Both speakers have experience in the times of discrimination and are helping motivate the people, but in their own way. Langston Hughes wrote a poem called “Let America Be America Again,” his poem was to help motivate the oppressed people and call them to action, to rally together and do something about their issues rather than be a bystander. Martin L. King’s “American Dream” speech is very similar, given that he also wanted to do something about inequality and hoped for a better future. “We the people must redeem the land, the mines, the plants, the rivers…” This quote from the poem shows how the segregated people have a

Du Bois and Alain Locke are intellectual giants in their own right that debated and discussed the plight of black people during the “Great Migration” up north. Although McKay did not agree with the likes of Dubois and Locke, they retaliated and returned a like for like. In 1889, McKay was born in Jamaica. He later became an American citizen until 1940. At this particular, the Harlem Renaissance was a powerful and global movement.

In both Dwight Okita's story, "Response to Executive Order 9066", and Sandra Cisneros' story “Mericans”, both express in a way that you can be American no mather what your ethnic background is. In both stories the character experiences an inconvience because of their race and the stories use other characters to help to develop the theme.

The English - speaking Caribbean abounds with prominent writers including Jamaican novelist Tom Redcam (Thomas Macdermot), Claude Mckay, Jamaican born poet, and perhaps the best known writer of this generation internationally. Mckay later became one of the leading writers of Harlem Renaissance, a flowering black culture in New York in the 1920's and 1930's. Other writers who rose to prominence during this period are C. L. R. James of Trinidad, whose works protest against colonialism and help to define the anticolonial political and cultural struggles of his time. He was also instrumental