The moment for this poem passed long ago
as the sly smile of James
Baldwin browns the cover of his words
in the interview where he questions
is there a gay community, and if
he was ever a member, while a woman
shimmies in a red dress in my
memory of a dance floor
and I hear miles and Miles
and a marathon of Bessie
in the thought I am neither
black nor white nor
any other but I have loved
this brown face as perhaps
no other man, though I will
never be of his and he of mine,
though we keep each other,
don't we, in these lines. O
Giovanni's room, that love
you deny is your own soul's
tiny tiny space in the
During the years of the 1920 's through the early 1930 's, African Americans established themselves artistically, culturally and socially. This intellectual period was known as the Harlem Renaissance. The period of the Harlem Renaissance brought together black authors, musicians, and poets. One of the most notable poets of this era was Langston Hughes. Langston Hughes is considered one of leaders of this period. He 's famously known for his controversial bodies of work. One of the most controversial poems created by Hughes is his poem called "Silhouette". Silhouette was written in 1936, where racial segregation and prejudice was emphasized. What makes this piece of work so controversial is how the tone within the poem takes a drastic turn when the speaker and gender are changed. This paper will analyze the ambiguous meanings of the poem once the speakers identity is transitioned.
Nikki Giovanni gained most of her fame during the 1960s and 1970s, when she was expelled from her college and started exploring and investigating the world. She is well known for her more militant and violent poetry during that time period, but now she has become a more personal poet. A quote said by her could relate exactly to her themes in poetry and life. “A lot of people resist transition and therefore never allow themselves to enjoy who they are. Embrace the change, no matter what it is; once you do, you can learn about the new world you're in and take advantage of it.” As of today, she is seen as one of the most influential African American women in the world. Some may say that Nikki Giovanni’s change in style and themes in her poems from militant and harsh, to emotional and family-oriented were linked to the emotional changes in her life.
Giovanni’s Room written by James Baldwin was written in the 1950’s. A book about love, homosexuality, and the struggles of both. During the 1950’s being a homosexual wasn’t exactly a desirable thing to be, in America or England. The fifties was a hard time for homosexuals and bisexuals. In Europe families were starting back up as the men returned home from World War II, due to this being gay was seen as a threat to the typical family. This was a time in which one could go to prison for their sexual orientation and the sexual acts they pursued. Chain arrest could be made as well, where one would get arrested, questioned on if they knew other gays and if they did and could identify them, then their sentence would be lesser or easier (CITATION). So as imagined “coming out of the closet” wasn’t a thing that many wanted to do, they wanted to stay hidden. The phrase “coming out of the closet” or even just the term “closet” represents an idea where people hid their sexuality. If one were to “come out of the closet” they would announce or make it known in public that they were accepting their sexuality and letting others see it as well. In Giovanni’s Room we as readers can see a lot of this hiding, confusion, and struggle with the idea of being gay, especially with the character of David. David uses Giovanni’s room as his own sort of “closet”.
Today, we see that this is not necessarily true due to the fact that poetry is not about the complexity of the piece but instead about the information that can be taken out of it. Consequently, when reading “Harlem” from a superficial perspective, one gets a feel that this free form is very personal. Now, when this passage is read more
Race plays a big part in this poem. He speaks on Harlem and its culture and this environment but also about mutual interest with people
James Baldwin reasons through his book that individuality and an honest sense of self can only be attained through a private voyage that includes more than just drive from one point to an alternative point, it must also lead to a variation within and an acceptance of who one really is. In Giovanni's Room, the main character David travels a journey pursuing personal growth and acceptance to who he really knows he is. A white, homosexual man, David finds himself stuck in a certain personality one that is straight, masculine and white. An American ideal which he knows does not define who he really is. David devotes the novel trying to outpace and cast-off his past and features of his individuality which he wishes to forget. Through David's
When James Baldwin first presented the novel Giovanni’s Room to his agent Helen Strauss, she told him to burn it - she feared the novel’s open homosexual relationship would be unappealing to Baldwin’s audience and harm the book’s success. This negative attitude towards the LGBT+ community made it all the more important for Baldwin to publish his novel, which was unexpectedly praised for “its prose and its honesty” (Polchin). Influenced early on by society’s stereotypical views on men and sexuality, David, the main character of Giovanni’s Room, develops a mindset of homosexuality as wrong and impure, despite being a gay man himself. He tries to reject his sexuality most palpably through a relationship
The poem was written during the Harlem Renaissance. From the year 1910 to the 1930s this particular period was known as the New Negro Movement where it was considered a golden age in African American culture, where literature, music, stage performance and art were all a form of expression. The Harlem Renaissance was an important moment in African American history because Blacks gained recognition and paved the way for future artists, composers, musicians, photographers and most importantly writers. Some of the most influential African American writers and/or poets during this time
The contemporary American literary novel Giovanni’s Room was published in 1956 by the American writer James Baldwin. Baldwin is widely known as a controversial writer in the 20th century who challenged American beliefs on homosexuality during a time period where such behaviors were looked negatively upon. Baldwin himself identified as a gay African American. I feel as though Baldwin’s race and sexual orientation often reflected in his work. In the novel the main character David struggles with accepting his own sexual orientation, switching between two relationships with his heterosexual fiancé Hella and his homosexual lover Giovanni. All the while, David cannot fully come
Another thought that pondered my mind through the course of this essay, was that of the continuous sense of isolation and confusion being felt by the poet, so early on in their life. This sense of isolation is unfortunately so prevalent in the LGBTQA community where it remains difficult to be who you are, or know where you stand in a world that can be so hateful. In many ways, I am sure we are all very familiar with the feeling of loneliness and needing to isolate in one way or another. It is incredibly difficult to be and feel comfortable with yourself when so many people are telling you how you are supposed to look, feel, be and act all the time. However, it is especially troublesome when you do not have a supportive community around you and that remains the harsh reality for so many people today who live without support.
Hero and Claudio are the traditional romantic lovers; he falls for Hero right after meeting her before even speaking a word to her. His admiration from afar over her beauty echoes the idea of courtly love. Following his entrapment, Claudio immediately asks Benedict “didst thou note the daughter of Signor / Leonato?” (I.I.132-133). He asks his friend about the lady, before he has even properly met her; he excites himself with the prospect of courting her. He considers Hero to be the ideal woman: “Can the world buy such a jewel?” (I.I.148). His love is irrational. Claudio is already willing to pour himself into winning her over; he speaks of marriage a few moments after seeing her: “if Hero would be my wife” (I.I.161). In this way, Claudio actually matches well with Hero, even though her character is not as developed as his is; she has few lines, and her stage time is often spent in silence. Additionally, other than a few quips to Pedro disguised as Claudio during the masquerade, she does not express interest in Claudio until the matchmaking scene where she tricks Beatrice. In this scene, Hero describes Benedict as “the only man of Italy, / Always excepted my dear Claudio” (III.I.92-93). While giving Beatrice a fond description of Benedict, Hero also expresses her interest in her own lover. She refers to him as dear, even though the audience has not seen any interaction between the two characters.
The ‘Up on your feet’ passage is a famous excerpt from Dante’s Inferno. It is quite inspirational, for good purpose; the passage is half directed at Dante the pilgrim, and half at Dante the poet (his self). He needed just as much inspiration to finish writing the dang thing as his fictional self needed inspiration to make it through hell. That is where Virgil’s brief monologue comes in. Through his words, he is able to hype Dante up enough to want to finish writing Inferno, and make it through hell. But what does he say that is so inspirational? How does this passage fit in with the rest of the poem? The ‘Up on your feet’ passage can be broken into three parts, each with its own individual meaning. The three parts of the ‘Up on your feet’
The poem was really powerful in part because of the hostile era during the early and late 1940s where being near white women was forbidden and for which several African Americans especially in the South were lynched or brutally punished. This aspect grabbed the essential audience and created the perfect atmosphere to deliver his message through the poem, because all
The poem by Langston Hughes is a short poem, with only eleven lines. This poem was written 1951 when African Americans where still racially segregated and where still facing prejudice as well as economic hardships. The speaker, not clear if male or female makes correlations of the outcome of the “dream deferred”. He or she wonders if it dried up, festered, or is stinking up, crusting over, or exploding.
The author of this poem, Gertrude Stein, was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and she is the youngest of five children. This prestigious modernist writer came from a family of wealthy German Jewish immigrants, who unfortunately passed away. Her mother died of cancer in 1888, and her father, a wealthy and known merchant, passed in 1891. When Gertrude was still a young child, her family moved from Pennsylvania and went back to Europe. Stein spent her first years in Vienna and later in Paris. In the year of 1879, she went back to America, and settled in Oakland, California. Her brother Leo is one of her greatest influences. Since, of all brothers, they are the closest, when he decided to leave Baltimore to enroll at Harvard, Stein decide to come along with no sign of hesitation. Because of Harvard’s policy to not allow women, Stein enrolled at the Harvard Annex, the precursor to Radcliffe College, where she studied psychology for four years. Because of her interest in the subject, Stein decided to pursue the field and went to medical school, where she began to study at Johns Hopkins in the fall of 1897. With time her eagerness declined, and her grades dropped. She had a history of depression, as you can see in her writing from the time, alongside with the disappointment in her studies. She couldn’t see herself in the traditional roles as wife and mother, and there are even some people who can assure you that she was having homosexual