White Lies By Langston Hughes

It is strange that two of the most prominent artists of the Harlem Renaissance could ever disagree as much as or be as different as Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright. Despite the fact that they are the same color and lived during the same time period, they do not have much else in common. On the one hand is Hurston, a female writer who indulges in black art and culture and creates subtle messages throughout her most famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. On the other hand is Wright, who is a male writer who demonstrates that whites do not like black people, nor will they ever except for when they are in the condition “…America likes to see the Negro live: between laughter and tears.” Hurston was also a less political writer than

"The Word Black (The Chicago Defender, November 3, 1951)" is a short story written by Langston Hughes. Langston Hughes talks about how the word black is used in a negative way. For example, blacklist, blackmail, black ball, or black sheep. To addition, he talks about the word "White" should be used in a negative way. For instances, Langston said "Wait till my days will come!In my language, bad will be white."

In The essay “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” is a descriptive essay in which Zora Neale Hurston discovers her real identity. At the beginning of the essay, the setting takes place in Eatonville, Florida describing moments when Zora greets her neighbors by singing and dancing without anybody judging her. Back then, she was free from feeling different among other races. However, a tragedy happened when she was thirteen, her mom passed away and she left home to attend school in Jacksonville where she experiences discrimination due to her color of skin. She was introduced to a different lifestyle where the color of her skin was an unfortunate thing. However, she felt this change effected the way she viewed her appearance, as well as inside her. Here she also experienced isolation that comes from being different compared to other races. Hurst realizes that it’s more than just being “colored”, but how race can separate people. Back in history, Jacksonville’s habitants were a mixture of blacks and whites. In Jacksonville, Hurst was just another “colored girl.” However, this essay motivated me to analyze, evaluate and synthesize these works and explore the concepts and themes that run through each of the readings. Most importantly, find out what made this essay so important in American literature. According to the description in the essay, I have notice that the author Hurston uses literary devices like metaphor and tone that I found interesting and deserving for the reader to enjoy this journey.

Stephanie Ericsson and Langston Hughes both confront dishonesty in The Ways We Lie and Salvation respectively. These authors present the deviation from the truth as a main theme and maintain that it produces negative impacts on life. However, The Ways We Lie more effectively supported its purpose than Langston Hughes’s Salvation.

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

Both Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston are similar to having the same concept about black women to have a voice and being perspective. These two authors are phenomenal women who impacted on the southern hospitality roots. Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston comment on fear, avenge, and righteousness among African American women that are abuse of their power. Walker and Hurston uses the same theory of feminism to point out the liberation that is told through the story of survival. The comparison of the two authors expresses hardship among characters to discover their purpose. Also, Walker fines Hurston books intruding on into detail the heritage. Hurston narratives was not dull it was more upscale and interesting to talk about change to become reality. Walker and Hurston develop a comparison of the folk tale tradition in black culture. (Howard 200)

One of the foremost poets of the Harlem Renaissance was Langston Hughes. Many of Hughes' poems are about the act of writing poetry, justifying African-American poets' right to speak and create verse, which was denied in previous eras. The act of literacy for African-Americans was depicted as a radical, self-conscious act in Hughes' output. This is explicitly seen in Hughes' poem "Theme for English B." The poem very literally portrays a young, African-American man (presumably Hughes himself) being given an assignment by a white teacher to write about himself. The poet is forced into a paradox he is in a white-run institution, using the language of whites, and yet he must speak about himself truthfully:

Langston Hughes is a famous poet known mostly for his contribution to the Harlem Renaissance. He wrote many inspirational poems that are still read and used for educational purposes. Many of his poems were inspired by his life and his story. One of his many poems entitled “Theme for English B” talks about how his teacher instructed him to write a page about himself and it will be true. In a “Theme for English B”, Hughes uses tone, and characterization to display a relationship between race and writing.

Langston Hughes and Yusef Komunyakaa, much like any two poets when compared, are very different. However, they composed two poems that are very similar. Langston Hughes’s poem, “Theme for English B”, and Yusef Komunyakaa’s, “Facing it”, can be compared in many different ways. The most outstanding similarity of the two poem’s, is the fact the speakers are outsiders and very much unlike everyone else in the poem because of their race. With the quotes “I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem” (Hughes 7), and “My black face fades” (Komunyakaa 1), It is very clear both writers want their audience to know early on in the poems that each are speaking from an African-American perspective. In the early to the middle of the 1900’s when the poems were written, things were different for a person from African-American decent, in Hughes case it was college and in Komunyakaa’s case it was the Vietnam war. Being of African-American decent is a minority that most people wouldn’t understand because of the history in their race. Both poets have endured experiences of oppression in the past that have effected their writing styles. Other similarities in the poems include the use of the same literary techniques such as narrative structure, symbols, metaphors, and tone to prove that the speakers are different and unlike the majority because of their past experiences in the past. Both poems use the speakers past to further capture their feelings and emotion towards each subject. Hughes and

In her poem, “White Lies,” Trethewey’s theme in the story is discrimination and her struggle with her personal identity in America. Being born bi-racial, Trethewey explores racial identity that she experienced during her childhood. She was born in 1966 in Mississippi to a black mother and a white father. At this time, interracial marriages were not legal in Mississippi and were seen as shameful in society. Trethewey was very light skinned and had the desire to be white. The poem delivers the author’s experience with bigotry while living in the South (Bentley). This created an atmosphere of a racist society where the white community was superior over the African Americans. Growing up during this period, Trethewey felt like a lost little girl struggling with trying to find herself. In The Washington Post, Trethewey said, “Poetry showed me that I wasn’t alone” (Trethewey). This meant that writing poetry helped her to realize that she was not alone in this world of judgment, there were others facing the same issues that she was. The tone of her poem was sadness because of the prejudices she faced. To her, poetry was a place that could hold her grief (Bentley). Throughout her poem, “White Lies,” she desired to tell lies about who she was and how she lived. Her childhood was filled with thoughts and hopes of being white instead of being bi-racial. She states, “The lies I could tell, / when I was growing up” (Trethewey l. 1-2). These lines imply that she could easily lie to cover

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.

Langston Hughes’s “Let America Be America Again” is a poem that could be endlessly applied to where America stands today. This poem illustrates the morals, ideas, and visions set forth by those who found this country and how America has begun straying from those principles. The poem expresses that America is made up of all walks of people and that no man should be crushed by those above him, but rather be given the same opportunity as those above him. Hughes desire to make America great again can be shared in some way or another by most Americans making this poem everlasting. “Let America Be America Again” has the personalization, the language, the connection shared by every American, and the rhyme to allow readers of every race, gender, or religious belief to be brought together as not only people but as Americans.

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

Not all poems fall into the category of epic poetry or ballads. Some pieces are short and concise rather than lengthy and elegant. A shorter poem may focus more thoroughly on diction, or the author’s specific choice of words, rather than things such as rhyme scheme or meter. Langston Hughes poem “Suicide’s Note” is a perfect example of this. Because it is only twelve words long, every single word is important and chosen carefully. This poem uses many literary techniques, none more than diction, to achieve its purpose. which is to focus on the split-second decision that is suicide.

I think the poem Life is Fine is a lyric poem. The poem Life is Fine is about someone who went down to a river to think. But he can't think so he jumps in the river. And he starts to sink. Then he takes the elevator up 16 floors and thinks about his baby.