Raisin Cane: A Harlem Renaissance Odyssey And Siddhartha

" In the 1900's black searched for a place in the world after slavery... "Joe Turner's Come and Gone their identity is called their song,..However main characters have trouble finding their song because of the internal struggle of whom they were and whom they are now becoming as a freed slave..." (Sinclair 99). Joe's Turner Come and Gone provide an example to how African Americans' culture was established, its self-identity issues relate how African-American's find not only their self but their culture as well, and once one can conceive that, they've found their identity or their "song": " ...It is connecting yourself to that and understanding that this who you are. Then you can go out in the world and sing your song as an African" ( P. 1352).

In Hughes poem “Note on the commercial Theatre” he started off with an angry tone, upset that African American music was used by the whites, but the African Americans didn’t receive the credit for the artistic work: “You’ve taken my blues and gone you sing them on Broadway” (1043). Furthermore, at the end of the poem Hughes does expresses a powerful ending, our culture is beautiful, but you will never be me: “Black and beautiful and sing about me, and put on plays about me! I reckon it’ll be me myself” (1043)! Hughes poems focused on the urban cultures, while Zora Neale Hurston short story “How it feels to be Colored Me” focused on her as a woman who is discovering herself and her worth.

Who was involved? Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, Wallace Thurman, Zora Neale Hurston, Jessie Redman Fauset, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Walter White are just a few of the literary contributors of the Harlem Renaissance (Richard Wormser, pbs.org). These people, through their writings, offered a better understanding of what it meant to be African American during this time in history. Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Paul Robeson, Florence Mills, Cab Calloway, and Billy Pierce are just a few of the musical contributors (bio.com).

 Harlem Renaissance 2015, Wikipedia, accessed 23 August 2015, .  Harlem Renaissance n.d., History, accessed 23 August 2015, .  Harlem Renaissance n.d., Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed 23 August 2015, .  Great Migration 2015, Wikipedia, accessed 23 August 2015, .  Claude McKay 2015, Wikipedia, accessed 24 August 2015, .

There were many notable events taking place in the years 1900-1940, some being Pablo Picasso painting one of the first cubist paintings is 1907 , the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 , the 18th Amendment being added to the Constitution (prohibiting the use of intoxicating liquors) and then being repealed in 1933 , the 19th Amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote in 1920 , Amelia Earhart becoming the first woman to fly across the Atlantic in 1928 , and the list continues. Undoubtedly one of the most influential of events during this time was the Harlem Renaissance. Even with its many leaders and innovators, it wouldn’t have been nearly as effective had it not been for Alain LeRoy Locke: black writer, philosopher, and teacher who influenced black artists to look to African sources for pride and inspiration. Without Locke’s contribution, the Renaissance would not have flourished as much as it did, and black pride would have taken longer to develop and accept.

The early 1900s was a time marked with tragedy in America. Started and ended with the Great Depression in between, it was not America 's finest moment. Prohibition was in place, the Klu Klux Klan was still marching, and the Lost Generation was leaving for Paris. But despite the troubling times, people still found beauty and meaning in the world around them. They still created art and celebrated life. The Harlem Renaissance was an artistic and literary movement that developed a new black cultural identity through artistic expression. It fused African traditions with slave history and American culture, and revealed to the world what life was like as a black person in America.

Writing during the emergence of the “New Negro” movement, Claude McKay and Langston Hughes work to reconcile black life in white America. The trope used by the two poets within “The Harlem Dancer” and “The Weary Blues” is that of a performance and a single speaker’s recollection of it. While both depict an African-American performer presumably consumed by the isolation and oppression of their condition, the intensity of the performances prove to be vastly disparate. Hughes’ “The Weary Blues” features a much more transcendent performance than that of McKay’s “The Harlem Dancer” not only because of the relationship between the audience and the performer, but the degree of ubiquity in descriptions of the performer and the poetic form through

Since time immemorial, art has been an integral tool in influencing a society, pushing forth ideas, expressing the general atmosphere amongst the party’s involved and fighting vices in the society. Art is fundamental in the transformation of any society through its ability to influence opinions and values. Through sound, vision any other form that art may take, communications is enhanced. Visual art, Music and poetry have always been the most used.

The Harlem Renaissance was different than I thought it was. I had imagined it was a time of African American’s gathering together in small groups and reading poems and writing stuff. When I began researching, the things that I found blew my mind. Seeing all of the big names of the Renaissance was cool because I have heard these names all my life, but never realized why those names were significant. Being a student in band, the name Louis Armstrong has been a name I have heard since 6th grade. Up until this project, I never knew the extent of the impact he made on the world of music.

The Harlem Renaissance represents the rebirth and flowering of African-American culture. Although the Harlem Renaissance was concentrated in the Harlem district of New York City, its legacy reverberated throughout the United States and even abroad, to regions with large numbers of former slaves or blacks needing to construct ethnic identities amid a dominant white culture. The primary means of cultural expression during the Harlem Renaissance were literature and poetry, although visual art, drama, and music also played a role in the development of the new, urban African-American identity. Urbanization and population migration prompted large numbers of blacks to move away from the Jim Crow south, where slavery had only transformed into institutionalized racism and political disenfranchisement. The urban enclave of Harlem enabled blacks from different parts of the south to coalescence, share experiences, and most importantly, share ideas, visions, and dreams. Therefore, the Harlem Renaissance had a huge impact in framing African-American politics, social life, and public institutions.

During the 1920’s a new movement began to arise. This movement known as the Harlem Renaissance expressed the new African American culture. The new African American culture was expressed through the writing of books, poetry, essays, the playing of music, and through sculptures and paintings. Three poems and their poets express the new African American culture with ease. (Jordan 848-891) The poems also express the position of themselves and other African Americans during this time. “You and Your Whole Race”, “Yet Do I Marvel”, and “The Lynching” are the three poems whose themes are the same. The poets of these poems are, as in order, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Claude Mckay.

I always found the 1920’s a very interesting decade as it went from a lively moment to a depressing and struggling one within a split second. Therefore, I believe that I learned all of the concepts pretty well. For instance, I learned about the Harlem Renaissance, the cause and effect of The Dust Bowl, and the lasting political argument of the New Deal in the United States. First of all, the Harlem Renaissance was a time period where African Americans began to embrace their roots and create art/works to reflect their experience living in US society. However, during the Great Depression many Americans were left unemployed. In addition to drastic unemployment rates, the environmental disaster, also known as the Dust Bowl, contributed to many

The production spearheaded with a solemn poem by Langston Hughes entitled "Harlem." Preparing for an emotionally empowering theater piece, the poem quieted the audience and placed a serious blanket over us. While appropriate for me, I found it extremely coincidental that the poem's title, ties in directly with James Baldwin and his extensive writings on the 1943 Harlem race riots. With the lights off and just a solitary voice reciting the poem, it gave us, the audience, an immediate notion of play's melancholy style.

The theme of double consciousness pervades the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance. Reasons for expressing double-consciousness stem from historical, cultural, and psychological realities facing African-Americans realities that continue to define the sociocultural landscape in the United States. In Countee Cullen's poem "Heritage," the opening line is "What is Africa to me?" The narrator ponders what it means to be of African heritage, especially given the astounding number of generations separating ancestral ties from life in twentieth century America. Moreover, slavery tore apart families and communities, rendering African identity into a fragmented entity and African-American identity even more inchoate. The Harlem Renaissance represented a revolutionary shift in the way that the sons, grandsons, daughters, and granddaughters of slaves begun to conceptualize the African-American culture. African-American identity is naturally one of double- or even multiple-consciousness, and this consciousness is conveyed throughout the literature of the Harlem Renaissance.

In exploring the problem of identity in Black literature we find no simple or definite explanation. Nevertheless, it is generally accepted that it is rooted in the reality of the discriminatory social system in America with its historic origins in the institution of slavery. One can discern that this slavery system imposes a double burden on the Negro through severe social and economic inequalities and through the heavy psychological consequences suffered by the Negro who is forced to play an inferior role, 1 the latter relates to the low self-estimate, feeling of helplessness and basic identity conflict. Thus, in some form or the other, every Negro American is confronted with the