Jean Toomer Portrait In Georgia Poem Analysis

“Facing It” by the American black poet Yusef Komunyakaa of Shreveport is written with the use of visual images. Yusef Komunyakaa writes about one of his many trips to the Vietnam's Veteran's Memorial in Washington DC. This Memorial is a long polished slab of black reflectant granite with the names of all the US soldiers who lost their lives in Vietnam. Yusef says “my black face fades, hiding inside the black granite”. Here Yusef uses his reflection in the wall to bring the reader back to the war and how he feels standing at the wall now. He makes his feeling ambiguous and give the reader the opportuntity to decide what he is feeling through his use of viual images.

Octavia Butler’s Kindred is a compelling novel in and of itself. It incorporates the thrill of science fiction, the truth of historical fiction, and the power of a neo-slave narrative to create an unforgettable story. However, Kindred is also impressive on the front of literary techniques and style. A large part of what makes the novel so fascinating is its consistent use of parallelism. In particular, the major parallel between Dana’s experience as a black woman in antebellum America and 20th century America gives the plot depth by debunking the notion that the future is exclusively progressive in comparison to the past. In Kindred, the literary device of parallelism relates Dana’s experience as a black woman in the 19th century and the 20th century on the bases of education, gender, and race, all of which show that the two time periods in

Throughout the course of Coming of Age in Mississippi, readers observe as Anne Moody undergoes a rigorous transformation – the period of adolescence proves to be years of growth and exposure for Moody. As a child, she is aware of the difference in treatment between whites and blacks – however, she is oblivious to the reason why. It is not until Emmett Till’s murder that Moody really becomes aware of what is happening in the world around her. Prior to August of 1955, Moody had been so consumed with school, work and family that she didn’t pay very much attention to race relations. It’s a point of awakening when she finally grasps the hatred that whites in Mississippi have for blacks – she now begins to understand why her family had lived through such inhumane conditions. As Moody begins to understand the concept of race and equality, she thus realizes which side of the spectrum black people are placed on. On the other hand, Moody’s mama Toosweet, has long endured the brutal callousness of Chattel Slavery -- as a result she holds a different perspective than Moody. Their differing viewpoints often lead to tension between the two characters; this essay will examine and compare the psychological effects of Chattel Slavery on Moody and her mother.

By employing themes such as psychosexual fantasies, race, gender, and violence, artist Kara Walker reconstructs and explores the history and effects of American slavery on American culture. Although being called names like notorious, revolting, anti-progressive, and shameless, she continues to be a pioneer of bringing the unspeakable aspects of American slavery that are not commonly discussed and are left out of the history books to the foreground of public discussion.

In keeping with the vision of modernism Toomer concentrated greatly on stretching the boundaries of language and forging new imagistic representations of political and societal convictions. However, his use of imagery seems in pointed contrast to many of his white contemporaries. For Toomer in Cane, dusk is most importantly an image of fusion, of something ending and beginning simultaneously in a way difficult to perceive: as the narrator of "Fern" meditates, "Dusk, suggesting the almost imperceptible procession of giant trees, settled with a purple haze about the cane. I felt strange, as I always do in Georgia, particularly at dusk. I felt that things unseen to men were tangible immediate. It would not have surprised me had I had a vision" (19). How strikingly modern is this image, yet how different from a similar representation in Yeats' "Into the Twilight" where the same time of day represents inspiration and imagination: "Laugh heart again in the gray twilight,/Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn" (141, lines 3-4). Or think of the obvious relation to Eliot's "[l]et us go then, you and I,/ When the evening is spread out against the sky/ Like a patient etherised upon a table" from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (482, lines 1-3). Here the twilight, or dusk, is a suffocating time reminiscent of impending death. Toomer's dusk is of a completely different time and place and

Toomer’s poems enhanced the moods of wistful and mournful pastoralism that pervades the book. His poems provide transitioning from one narrative to another, incorporating myths and symbols.

The early 1900s was a very challenging time for Negroes especially young women who developed issues in regards to their identities. Their concerns stemmed from their skin colors. Either they were fair skinned due mixed heritage or just dark skinned. Young African American women experienced issues with racial identity which caused them to be in a constant struggle that prohibits them from loving themselves and the skin they are in. The purpose of this paper is to examine those issues in the context of selected creative literature. I will be discussing the various aspects of them and to aid in my analysis, I will be utilizing the works of Nella Larsen from The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, Jessie Bennett Redmond Fauset,

“Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination” written by American author, feminist and social activist, bell hooks, dissects the dichotomy of black and white culture in a westernized society. Hooks utilizes the term ‘whiteness’ throughout her piece as an acknowledgment of the domination, imperialism, colonialism, and racism that white people have asserted among black people. This discipline progressively has evolved from history; through slavery and forth, leaving an imprint in

Each part of the United States had their different standpoints towards blacks and the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance were devoted to crushing the negative attitudes placed upon the Afro-Americans. During this time race was a social construct. Everyday lives were affected by skin color whether people were aware or not. For years African Americans were shunned into a classification that viewed their society as less than human. Toomer’s novel shows the ability race has to affect and intersect different aspects and domains of society and life, as well as dismantle it. Jean Toomer created this piece of art for a reason. Cane suggests that the social construct created upon race should be avoided, for people of all different social classes have equal potential for success.

Sometimes people hold on to our past which could cause us to lose understanding of others and in the world. For an example, the poem “To a dark Girl” by Gwendolyn Bennett is about how young black girls carry pain on the shoulders and they should let it go. This essay is about how the author’s use of tone , word choice , and imagery helps the following theme emerge in “To a Dark Girl”: that black girls should never hold on to their past.

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.

When you live in the suburbs of Atlanta, it was easy to forget about whites. Whites were like those pigeons: real and existing, but rarely seen or thought about…everyone had seen white girls and their mother coo-coing over dresses; everyone had gone to downtown library and seen white businessmen swish by importantly, wrists flexed in front of them to check the time as though they would change from Clark Kent into Superman…those images were a fleeing as cards shuffled in a deck, where as the ten white girls behind us were real and memorable (179).

The poem suddenly becomes much darker in the last stanza and a Billy Collins explains how teachers, students or general readers of poetry ‘torture’ a poem by being what he believes is cruelly analytical. He says, “all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it”. Here, the poem is being personified yet again and this brings about an almost human connection between the reader and the poem. This use of personification is effective as it makes the

In “That Evening Sun,” William Faulkner uses only thousands of words to recreate the old, cruel doctrine of racial discrimination in the South America. The whole story is told by a young boy, and it analyses the miserable life of a poor black woman, Nancy, from a naïve child’s perspective. The words in the story are simple but straightforward. Faulkner makes this story strange but unique by leaving no special relationship between the young narrator and the black woman, so the narrator is pushing the entire story with his truest descriptions and most direct portrays. This objective way of narration highlights the black woman’s tragic fate that is brought by the unfair society. Under the child’s simple narration, there are darkness and misery lying under the mask.

In “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens”, Alice Walker looks to educate us on the hardships that almost all black women face when trying to express themselves through things such as art. She delves into many sociological and psychological concepts that have affected black women throughout human history. These concepts and ideologies created a realm for mass exclusion, discrimination, and oppression of many African American women, including Alice Walker’s Mother, who Alice utilizes as one of her particular examples. The writing thematically aims to show how these concepts of sexism, racism, and even classism have contributed to black women’s lack of individuality, optimism, and fulfillment for generations. The author does a tremendous job of defending and expanding upon her arguments. She has a credible background, being a black woman that produces the art of literature herself. As well as being raised by one, Walker’s first-hand experience warrants high regard. Therefore, her use of abstract and introspective language is presented clearly and convincingly. Also, her use of evidence and support from sources like Jean Toomer, Virginia Woolf, and Phillis Wheatley, all produce more validity for her stance through poems, quotes, and even experiences. All these individuals have their own accounts pertaining to the oppression of black women and their individuality. Successfully arguing that the artistry plights of black women described in “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens” are