Summary Of Negative By Kevin Young

Throughout the poem, the author chooses simple diction. This makes the tone straightforward and blunt, like a black America who simply expresses himself instead of sermonizing about discrimination. Thereby, readers can accept the poem’s argument more easily. Furthermore, the author writes the poem mostly in long sentences to emphasize on short yet important sentences such as “That’s America.”, “Be we are. That’s true!”

Helping making the theme of this poem clear that many blacks wore a mask that suggested happiness and contentment, but concealed

In Langston Hughes poem “Let America be America Again” he talks about how America should return to the way that it was perceived to be in the dreams before America was truly America. Throughout the poem he uses various methods to evoke the patriotic images and dreams that he feels America should and will eventually be. Hughes states that America is supposed to be a place of equality for everyone including both white and colored people. During this period in time though there was not equality for everyone. Hughes talks about an America where both whites and colored people will have equality in all aspects socially, politically, and economically. What Hughes is saying is that both whites and colored

Throughout the poem, the poet also establishes a theme, created by W.E.B Dubois, that African-Americans live a double consciousness of being black and being American at the same time. The poet celebrates the two sides of the African-American experience as hate and love, pleasure and pain. In the beginning of the poem, Claude McKay describes that America

Poems are built with tradition, but in his case, the speaker wants to end tradition just as he wants to end racism. In line two and three, they both end with the same word which is called symploce. Symploce is a combination of anaphora and epistrophe which implies that these two lines are an important point of the figure of speech. The poem was written by stating a cause and effect. The line beginng with by is the cause and I being the effect. Its an explination of how he will fight social injustice. It also helps readers to use and understand the most effective way to fight social

During the entirety of the poem the speaker uses the contrast of light and dark to illustrate the divide of Caucasian and Native American in her life and the specific wording she uses throughout shows that she is ends up moving away from her white heritage’s side. We first start to see that she is upset with her white roots when she states that her mother left her with “large white breasts” that weigh down her body. This statement is quite important. With the addition of the word “white” and the use of the words “weigh down” the narrator seems to be implying that it is a burden to carry the whiteness. Also, the narrator uses specific wording in this statement in order to disassociate herself from her own white leanings since she refers to her breasts as if they were her mothers and not her own. The next time she mentions the word white comes in the third stanza. The speaker devotes an entire line to the short phrase “and is white” almost as if to single out that word in the poem and signify that being white

Now this story talks about the feeling’s blacks or colored and how they still remember slavery. In both poems they use some form of

The depiction black struggles within Dunbar’s dialect poetry makes Dunbar’s poetry beneficial for the black race. For example, in “An Ante-bellum Sermon,” when Dunbar writes “But when Moses wif his powah Comes an' sets us chillun free, We will praise de gracious Mastah, Dat has gin us liberty; An' we'll shout ouah halleluyahs, On dat mighty reck'nin' day, When we'se reco'nised ez citiz', Huh uh! Chillun, let us pray!”, he is depicting a common feeling of African Americans. Although this poem takes place before the Civil War, and before Dunbar’s birth, both of Dunbar’s parents were ex-slaves, which gave him an understanding of slavery. With an understanding of slavery, Dunbar was able to depict the desire for slaves to be rid of the unjust system. Beyond that, the idea is still applicable to the time in which he lived. From one issue to another, people anticipate equality while in dire situations. Similarly, in “Song,” Dunbar depicts the harmful race relations from his time. Instead of the black experience being told from a sympathizer perspective, Dunbar has a better understanding of what it was like to be black in the 1890s. The competition and hate between flowers symbolizes the conflict between white and black people. Through this metaphor, especially at the end when they celebrate the death of all daisies when he writes “In de fiel’ de flags is wavin’ in a tantalizing’ way, Kin o’ ‘joicin’ case de daisies all is daid,” Dunbar depicts the hateful race relations of his time. Dunbar’s representation of black issues brings attention to them, which benefits African Americans.

In the end, the poem offers more than the personal perspective of a Black poet. It speaks not just of the Black condition but of the human condition. All humans feel the irony of a life filled with petty cares, with mysteries, with struggle and with death, but a life brimming with the marvel of God's great deeds, with the excitement of divine inspiration, and with an appreciation for the beauty of a poem well made.

“Sunshine seemed like gold,” (line 4) and “Whole damn world’s turned cold,” (line 5). The poet

Another example in the poem of the similarities and differences between races is a when the author talks about the finances of Mister Samuel and Sam. ‘Mister Samuel deal wid high finance, Sam deal in a two-bit game; Mister Samuel crashes, Sam goes broke, But deys busted jes’ de same’ (Brown, 220) compares how the finances are much lower of the black man compared to the white man. This stanza continues by providing the similarities between the men. It discusses how both the white man and the black man experience financial downfall as a result.

The United States was a melting pot of all different races at this time, due to this idea of the American dream. For the African Americans, the American dream was way better than anything they experienced for the past 100 years, because they were no longer slaves. Having the opportunities to work, make money, and live in their own homes, they were very happy. But, their lives were still not perfect. On one of the online documents, the author is an ex slave who is going to the north to escape the discrimination of the south, he says, “I pick up my life and take it with me and i put it down in Chicago… Any place that is North and West and not South” (DBQ D). After The Emancipation Proclamation people, mostly in the south, still treated the slaves as if they were aliens. The goal for the person in this poem was to move

The word dusky contributes to the theme of the poem cause the things that happen to the African American was dark and mean. In line 8 it states,'' Lincoln went down to New Orleans.'' I feel this means that Lincoln only went down to New Orleans to help the African Americans. I can relate to this cause I have learn about this in history class.

Upon first look, I think of the real White House in Washington D.C., although I had a hard time finding any relevance other than the same title. After some digging, I found out that the author, Claude McKay, is a celebrated early 20th century black poet, this makes me think if what the narrator said is related to racism, or the discrimination now we call hate crime, against the black ones, this is backed by the last 3 lines, as the word “law”, “inviolate against … hate” in there. After some searching, I found the infamous Jim Crow laws at that time, which enforce racial segregation in Southern states, this verify the suspicions I had, because this is a “law” that enforce “hate” at that time. I can see the importance of historical background

The poem White Beyoncé counteracts the universal concept of success in a way how racial ethnicity impacts our victory, leading to an altered life. The title introduces a distinguishable life of Beyoncé if transformed into a White woman. Correspondingly, the speaker writes the poem with a form of couplets and never-ending sentences describing the ongoing sequence that a white Beyoncé would experience on her daily basis. To illustrate, “she watches Turner Classic Movies/ and sees herself there// Up in da country club she dines with friends/ The conversation is breezy// Doesn’t look the waiter in the eyes/ ordering vegan chicken salad w/ amenities” (39). This suggests the casual and comfortable lifestyle that is retained at ease, while the Turner