An Analysis of Henry Gates Jr. and “the Signifying Monkey”

During the 1900’s, society limited the rights of African Americans. Gwendolyn Brooks was a writer who experienced discrimination from the white population, and even African Americans who were fairer in complexion. She originally wrote about the oppression of African Americans, and their day-to-day struggles. Later on, she expanded her writings to include the struggles of African Americans everywhere. By the end of her life, she inspired thousands of young writers to write about things they’re passionate about. The impact Gwendolyn Brooks has on my life is incomparable to any other important figure I've studied. It's the steps that she took that made her a global leader and will impact my development as a global leader.

This paper examines the perspective of Langston Hughes and how his style of writing is. It looks at how several interrelated themes run through the poetry of Langston Hughes, all of which have to do with being black in America and surviving in spite of immense difficulties. Langston Hughes is one of the most influential writers because his style of work not only captured the situation of African Americans; it also grabbed the attention of other races with the use of literary elements and other stylistic qualities. Langston Hughes became well known for his way of interpreting music into his work of writing, which readers love and enjoy today.

Free enterprise allows for individuals to have large economic freedoms with some regulations from the government. Many entrepreneur have taken advantage of the system and gained immense wealth. A great example is Bill Gate who has made a huge contribution to the technological industry. His investments in companies like microsoft has helped make it one of the biggest companies in the world. Without a lot of restrictions from the government Bill Gates's fortune grew and without free enterprise his companies wouldn't be as huge as they are now.

What really is in a name? Apparently, there is a lot. In Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s story, "What's in a Name," there is a telling story about a young boy learning the powerful pain and humiliation in the racist practices of American society. Gates illustrates how racism can perpetuate prejudice that aims to take away individual identity and put entire groups of people down. Yet, the fact that Skip was willing to never look Mr. Wilson in the yes again shows that Gates himself was not going to just take the racism any longer, but was willing to fight it in his own unique way.

Bill Gates made a lot of changes to the way the world operates through technology and made life at lot easier for other people around the world. Bill Gates (also known as William Henry III or Trey) is an American entrepreneur, business mogul, investor, philanthropist, and one of the most richest and influential people in the world. He was also known as the best businessman in the 20th century. In his years as a child, he had the attitude for math and science as well as showing interest in computer programming in his teenage years.

When people think of a hero they think of Superman, Batman, or Spiderman, but what they should think of are people that make difference. Bill Gates has made a huge difference in today’s world; he is an extremely successful entrepreneur, an active philanthropist, and a very motivated person in general. With this motivation he has and will accomplish anything he puts his mind to. He was CEO of Microsoft and became the richest man in the world. He also created one of the most credible and generous charitable organization in the world. As a positive influence on today’s world, Bill Gates has proven himself as person with his good work ethic, positive attitude, and great accomplishments.

In “Delusions of Grandeur” by Henry Louis Gates Junior, Gates elaborates that Black youths should be given the opportunity to pursue a career that doesn’t involve being drafted into a professional sport. Gates brings to light the mishaps of the schools in the black communities that don 't push for scholarly students for chances at aspiring to go to college. He also speaks upon African Americans should not be seen just as athletes but are able to further in an education as a doctor, lawyer, engineer and much more. Today Black professional athletes should not be more respected than black professionals such as doctors, lawyers and educators.

(p 64). The author states, “This interior space of self-definition draws us into the complicated gender and class spaces of racial othering. Thus, conceiving of Black people, men and women, as historical and material subjects,” (p 64).

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life” (253). The man who changed the world of technology said this in front of thousands of Stanford graduates. All of the interesting work and his life was written in a biography called Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different by Karen Blumenthal. Blumenthal included everything about Jobs from birth to death in this book. The title of the book came from Apple advertisements that said “Think Different.” The main character of the book was obviously Steve Jobs. Jobs was the co-founder of Apple Inc., NeXT, and Pixar and he was able to do all that because he was the man who thought different. Anyone who owns an Apple product or has seen many of the famous movies

Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Director of the Hutchins Center for African American Research at Harvard University, and an esteemed Alphonse Fletcher University Professor. According to his Harvard University profile he is an “Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, institution builder…and the recipient of fifty-five honorary degrees and numerous prizes.” Professor Gates was also the first African American scholar to be awarded the National Humanities Medal. In 1973 he earned his Bachelors in English Language and Literature from Yale University, and in 1974-1979 he got his Master’s. and Ph.D. in English Literature from Clare College at the University of Cambridge (Department of African and African American Studies). Throughout many of his texts Gates provides examples of the ambiguity of language and identity, and the oppressive role ideology plays in the black community; allowing readers to apply the idea of deconstruction to our own daily experiences

The writing styles of Claudine Rankine and Colson Whitehead vary significantly, but both manage to address the issue of race in America in profound ways. In Citizen: An American Lyric, the former utilizes a combination of images and poetry to convey a sense of open-endedness, while the latter follows a traditional historical fiction narrative in his novel, The Underground Railroad. The books build on historical and modern events to evoke emotion and convey criticism. *Rankine uses an experimental style to allow introspection, and Whitehead’s traditional writing blurs the line between fiction and nonfiction.

There are many authors that have made a great impact on their time period and the world today. Each author has a unique writing style due to the way that each individual was raised. For example, some authors may advocate slavery, but other authors were raised to believe slavery was a horrible mistreatment of others. Thus, whichever bias was believed by each author was reflected through their writing. Opinion after opinion, writers in America still had an influential voice. Phillis Wheatley’s “On Being Brought From Africa to America,” Henry Thoreau’s “Resistance to Civil Government,” Frederick Douglass’ “A Parody,” and Fanny Fern’s “Male Criticism on Ladies Books” share a similar theme of injustice inferiority to others and bias; however, on the contrary, they differ in the seriousness

The black freedom struggle has not yet come to an end – there are still prejudiced and racist radicals that try to negotiate white supremacy and dominance in order to prevent the blacks from their long wait for equality. Consequently, the movement has progressed very sluggishly in the past few centuries. Nevertheless, the campaign for equal rights has led to the triumph over slavery and has led to the accrual of suffrage rights. However, this is still not enough, not after centuries of enslavement, lynching, segregation, and discrimination. Oftentimes, there is still no justice in court houses, especially when black people are accused and convicted, even for the simplest of crimes – as compared to the white and powerful who are charged for heinous misconducts and get away scratch free. Hence, throughout the period of the Blacks’ long fight for freedom and equality, several Black intellectuals have come front with ideas that could administer better treatment for their people. A good strategy to encourage the black populace to fight for their freedom and their rights is by inverting popular ideas so that there is a clear distinction between the reasonable and unreasonable notions of equality and justice. Thus, it was not uncommon for these literati to undermine dominant discourses in order to bolster their own analyses. Among the discussed black intellectuals who inverted prevailing dissertations, three that stood out the most are Frederick Douglass, Anna Julia Cooper, and

The introductory line of Harriet Jacob’s preface to Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, “Reader, be assured this narrative is no fiction”, is short yet serving (Jacobs 224). Although brief in its nature, this statement manages to encompass two major aspects that characterize African-American literature: audience and truth. In all writing, understanding the target audience and how to arrange an argument or essay to appeal to that specific crowd is paramount. However, it is especially important for African-American authors, who typically need to expose injustices or call for social change in their works. In particular, two African-American authors who understood their audience and how to manipulate that understanding were Charles W. Chesnutt and Marcus Garvey. Although they were born only twenty-nine years apart, Chesnutt and Garvey technically wrote for different time periods. While Chesnutt’s work is associated with “Literature of the Reconstruction”, Garvey was grouped with authors and activists from the Harlem Renaissance (Gates and Smith 580 ). The separation of their literary epochs drove Chesnutt and Garvey to write for contradistinctive audiences that demanded unique written techniques and rhetorical strategies, but that both asked for utmost honesty.

During the slavery period a number of African slaves wrote stories, and poems about their daily hardships that they had to withhold by being a slave and everything else that happen throughout their life’s. Not many Black writers had the resources or support from their owners to publish what they wrote or anyone to care about what they wrote, lucky slaves did reach success when they published their work. Knowing where they came from or where they grew up from is important, the type of work that each individual accomplished when they published their work to the public. The massive impact that Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Jacobs, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Abraham Lincoln had in the black community and how they helped change the way they were being treated completely.