Transitioning Of A Silhouette By Langston Hughes

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!”

This poem is written from the perspective of an African-American from a foreign country, who has come to America for the promise of equality,

In conclusion, the poem was used as a key to unlock some of the thoughts the negro had concerning Africa. The negro in this poem was a representative of all negroes during this time; their thoughts and the their feelings toward Africa. Cullen’s usage of the literary devices allow for an effective expression of the meaning of this poem. Poems are intensified language of experience, so the devices assured the connection of the reader to the poem and the experience. This applies to many issues in society today because as beautiful as our country is there are still dark clouds that cover the very essence of what the states once stood

Both Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes were great writers but their attitudes towards their personal experience as an African American differed in many ways. These differences can be attributed to various reasons that range from gender to life experience but even though they had different perceptions regarding the African American experience, they both shared one common goal, racial equality through art. To accurately delve into the minds of the writers’ one must first consider authors background such as their childhood experience, education, as well their early adulthood to truly understand how it affected their writing in terms the similarities and

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.

All three of the poems discussed in this essay relate to the struggles suffered by African Americans in the late 18th century to the early 19th century in many different ways. They had to live under harsh

Langston Hughes is one the most renowned and respected authors of twentieth century America not simply one of the most respected African-American authors, though he is certainly this as well, but one of the most respected authors of the period overall. A large part of the respect and admiration that the man and his work have garnered is due to the richness an complexity of Hughes' writing, both his poetry and his prose and even his non-fictions. In almost all of his texts, Hughes manages at once to develop and explore the many intricacies and interactions of the human condition and specifically of the experience growing up and living as a black individual in a white-dominated and explicitly anti-Black society while at the same time, while at the same time rendering his human characters and their emotions in a simple, straightforward, and immensely accessible fashion. Reading the complexity behind the surface simplicity of his works is at once enjoyable and edifying.

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.

The Harlem Renaissance was an evolutionary period in terms of African-American cultural expression; in fact, the movement changed the way that black musicians, poets, authors, and even ordinary people perceived themselves. One of the most influential poets of the time was Langston Hughes. Hughes’ works display a pride in being black that most African-Americans are too afraid to show, even today. Moreover, he adamantly refused to submit to the sentiment that he should be ashamed of his heritage, instead believing that “no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself.”(p1990 From the Negro Artist). In the article “‘Don’t Turn Back’: Langston Hughes, Barack Obama, and Martin Luther King, Jr.” by Jason Miller, Miller analyzes how Hughes’ poetry has been used by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Barack Obama and how the House of Un-american Activities Committee affected that use.

This is a poem that is mainly directed to the violence that was often experienced by children with an African-American ethnicity. The violence was mainly experienced on the streets where a majority of these children lived.

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

“The Harlem Renaissance was a time where the Afro-American came of age; he became self-assertive and racially conscious… he proclaimed himself to be a man and deserving respect. Those Afro-Americans who were part of that time period saw themselves as principals in that moment of transformation from old to new” (Huggins 3). African Americans migrated to the North in great numbers to seek better lives than in the South as the northern economy was booming and industrial jobs were numerous. This movement brought new ideas and talents that shifted the culture forever. Black writers, such as Langston Hughes, used their work to claim a place for themselves and to demand self-respect in society. Poems that Langston Hughes wrote captured the essence of the complexity of a life that mixes joy and frustration of black American life through the incorporation of jazz and blues in order to examine the paradox of being black in mostly white America, the land of the not quite free.

In the poem, “Lynching Song”, a black man is being hanged by a group of white men. And although he might have died, he states that the whit men are the ones who are really dead. The reader captures the true meaning of the poem through the formal features that are being presented. In the five-stanza poem, there are four lines in the first two stanzas; three in the next two, and the last stanza only has one line. Not all the lines are the same beat either, in the first stanza the first two lines have four beats and the next two lines have five beats. In the second stanza, the first line has three beats and the following three lines have five beats. The third stanza has three consecutive four beat meters, and the fourth stanza starts with three

He states he is twenty-two years old, I’m sure referring to his age. He then goes onto say that he is colored, which I assume means he is dark skinned. He says he’s from Winston-Salem, which I know is located in North Carolina. At the time this poem was written, in 1951, racism played a huge part in everyday life. Moving onto line eight and nine, he lets us know that he attended more than one schools. He describes the location of one of the schools. The first school he attended was in his home town in North Carolina. Then, in Durham, and afterwards to the college he received this assignment from, “on the hill above Harlem.” Also, I know Harlem is in New York so the college must be too. Line ten describes he is the only colored student in his class and that there was a huge racial barrier between colored and non-colored people. Showing in line eleven through fifteen shows us what routes he has to take to go home. He purposely uses five verses to list his walk home. I can tell that he does not live close the college as the other students might have. During that time he probably lived in the ghetto. Moving on to line sixteen “It’s not

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