Here's some sites to explore as you progress through the readings:
The Kennedy Center: http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/exploring/harlem
Library of Congress Website: www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/harlem/harlem.html
Post below on ANY aspect of the texts.
Zora Neale Hurston's "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" was extremely funny and her wit is evident in the text. I like her approach and her unique phrasings like "The Great Stuffer of Bags" instead of God or to say that "The operation was successful and the patient is doing well, thank you" referring to slavery and its abolishment. Even though she takes a humorous view and speaks of her race as something that does not hinder her, as a reader we do feel that being African American has shaped who she is and how she feels. Like how she responds differently to the jazz music unlike her white friend and how racism tainted her once innocent self before she had gone off to school.
ReplyDeleteI love how she simply asserts her selfhood and that it is not done in terms of race or gender or boxed into any other form of classification. She says simply, "I am me." I love her analogy at the end with the different colored bags with all their contents dumped out. It's a vivid image of the phrase 'We're all the same on the inside.' Hurston queries maybe God randomly stuffed us all with these random things/attributes/etc and states that the color of the bag is completely arbitrary.
As for the poems, I like how Claude McKay's poetry is in Elizabethean sonnet form and how he shaped the form to fit his use. "The Lynching" had Christ-like imagery as the figure takes on the figure of Jesus on the cross and is mocked.
Langston Hughes use of structure in his poems created great rhythm and flow like that of music. His "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" felt like a spirtual with the phrase "My soul has grown deep like rivers" repeated twice. "Theme for English B" with its line "yet a part of me, as I am a part of you / That's American" reminded me of Whitman's "Song of Myself" when he says "For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you."
Though a great fan of Hughes, I was most intrigued this week by our reading of Claude McKay. I had never read him before, and his direct approach to the subject matter attracted my mind (probably due to the fact it is direct in its pescimism of the human condition, contrary to the works of Frost or Stevens, or even Eliot). In particular, of the three selections chosen, "The Lynching" kept me focused, albeit because of its graphic nature, more than "Africa" or "Harlem Dancer". As sad as the poem portrays Southern culture in the early twentieth century, it does so accurately. True to the fact--and therefore more poignant in the assertion of hate without reason--is the lack of description of the lynched's crime; for there probably was no crime committed, he was just a black man in the South and that was enough. McKay does display a very dark glimpse at what he pictures White attitudes towards Black as he envisions all the 'little lads' as future mob lynchmen, and the women, who as society presents as the more compassionate sex, look on with mere content.
ReplyDeleteWhat's most striking to me about Hurston's "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" is the way she positions her black, female self in relation to the rest of the world. It seems like some of her assertions must have marked a seismic shift in not only the identities of African Americans, but the identity of America itself. Hurston proclaims, "I am me," and is capable of seeing herself as "cosmic Zora," as someone who transcends color lines, class lines, and even national lines. When she describes her "flying start" following her predecessors' having endured slavery, Reconstruction, and civil inequalities, she sounds as if, with the arrival of her generation, African Americans can finally stop enduring and begin living. She acknowledges that of course discrimination still exists, but things were changing. She sees herself as part of the country, occupying just as honorable and desirable a place in the national fabric as a wealthy white person ("Peggy Hopkins Joyce on Boule Miche"). She is "a fragment of the Great Soul that surges within the boundaries"; African Americans are no longer a fragmented and disenfranchised collection of "others," but fragments of a larger and better country. This shift, from feeling like an unwelcome stranger in an unforgiving country to feeling confident that that country is just as much yours as anyone else's, is powerful. She uses the possessive: "My country, right or wrong." America is finally at a point where her voice will be heard and counted, and she is eager to start telling the story of "Zora of Orange County."
ReplyDelete^^ That comment is from Margaret Green.
ReplyDeleteI listened to a live recording of Langston Hughes "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," read by Hughes himself with an introduction as to why he wrote this poem. He said that is was one of his first poems that he had written when he awas just out of school and how he was on a train going to Mexico to visit his father. He mentioned that while on the train, it was going across the Mississppi river, and he looked at the river from his view from it and began to question how his history was linked to this river. He recalled how his Grandmother had told him once that in slavery time, to be sold down the Mississippi river was one of the worst things for a slave. He also remembered learning about a time when Lincolon saw human beings being bought and sold on this river, and then eventually signed the Emancipation Proclamation. From this inspiration of the river glowing at sunset, Hughes took out a letter that his father had written him, and began to write this poem on the back, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers."
ReplyDeleteI have read this poem before, and each time that I read it, I feel a sense of patriotism for the African American's in the 19th century. I feel as though they have a solid place in our American tradition, and that we can largely attribute their heritage to some of the most extravagant landmarks of our time (Pyramids, Euphrates River, Nile, Congo, etc...). In the introduction to Langston Hughes, it was said that he found inspiration for his writings in the worl of white American poets who preceded him. Like Walt Whitman he heard America singing, and he asserted his right to "Sing America Black." Hughes definitely nailed it in this particular poem. It is one of my favorites to this day!
I have a particular attraction to the artists of the Harlem Renaissance because of its role in the birth of jazz, being a jazz fan and musician myself. The poetry, particularly of Langston Hughes, has a very deliberate jazz influence. Reading 'The Weary Blues' is like listening to the song itself. As the poem progresses, the sound becomes more and more distinct. Even when the musician is done, the song still "echoes through his head" as the poem does mine.
ReplyDeleteThe free-flowing & self-examining nature of 'Theme' reminded me of a jazz solo. This does not feel like a highly scrutinized work, but one he created with minimal effort. The repetition of "I guess" helps the poem feel very comfortable and approachable.
Here the artist takes what is in his heart, and with the skills of an artist, makes it into, you guested it, art.This ability to convey ones thoughts and feelings through your medium of choice, be it music, poetry or any other form, and to do so with a seeming effortlessness, is what drew me to jazz in the first place.
Wonderful comments so far, I can't wait to discuss some of these in class tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteLangston Hughes' writing has always struck me as a strangely wonderful mix of economic word use and something akin to an urban folk tale. "Theme for English B" reminded me so keenly of Autobiography of An Ex-Coloured Man. I felt the same suggestions as to the questions of race and humanity. Where does black end and white begin? WHAT is it that signifies one or the other? He so succinctly states the burdensome duality we've examined in several authors so far this semester: "Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me. Nor do I often want to be a part of you. But we are, that's true!"
I'm really enjoying Claude McKay so far. His work is rather dark and interesting. I particularly like "The Harlem Dancer." The image of the dancer out on the street giving the crowd a good show all while she seems absent-minded and cold. It's powerful stuff and I feel McKay is illustrating a common problem among the artists of Harlem. "The Lynching" goes very well along with this poem as it again evokes a kind of pressure and torture placed upon black people. These poems illustrate a very conflicted life. "And little lads, lynchers that were to be, Danced round the dreadful thing in fiendish glee." That line gave me chills.
ReplyDeleteCalude McKay was really interesting and different from what we/ve read so far. He paints a very dark picture of the the black man/woman's identity in this time period. This is especially prevalent in "The Harlem Dancer" and "The Lynching." I liked "The Harlem Dancer" because it was almost a beautiful desciption of this prostitute with her "voice like the sound of blended flutes" and other euphonic lines. Yet, at the end McKay gives us what I thought was coming, which was the sad aspect of a prostitue woman.
ReplyDeleteLangston Hughes has a very interesting style as well. "Theme for English B" gives an interesting perspective of this young, black college student who is the only one in his class. I like that he almost tried to break the cultural/race barrier when he listed the things he liked that we might consider a white man liking. Maybe other races, at times, don't like or dont want to be around each other, but we are all a part of each other. This was probably my favorite poem we read for today.
Previous to this class I had read all the works apart from Zora Neal Hurston's essay. What I loved about "How it Feels to be Colored Me" is that it did not seem to be a sermon or a radical political commentary as so many pieces of literature written by African Americans during the 1900's were. This is clearly seen in the statement ""But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all but about it. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more of less. No, I do not weep at the world--I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife". Her tone is one of self-confidence and self-veneration and she makes it clear that she wants to be recognized as an individual rather than being seen as just another "negro" when she states "I have no race, I am me". She asserts her position in society with no shame or complaint, but with celebration of who she is.
ReplyDeleteI really like "Theme for English B". Which is strange for me, because I generally dislike poetry. I especially like line 27 to the end. I like the way he uses 'me' and 'you' to both distinguish and connect the two races.
ReplyDeleteI also like the way he recognizes Harlem as not only where he lives but also a part him. He recognizes that He is a product of the culture he grew up in and now surrounds himself with. But he also is his own self, he likes blues, bop, and bach.
"The Weary Blues" was aboslutely brilliant. I loved it! I have family in Mississippi, particularly in the Delta area, so I'm really interested in blues music/culture. You really lose a lot when you don't read this poem aloud, because the meter is highly rhythmic, just like the music which it imitates. That was the first thing I noticed. It captures the exuberant spirit of the Harlem Renaissance as well as the misery of the age of slavery which allowed the Harlem Renaissance to happen in the way that it did. The bittersweetness (I doubt if that's exactly the right word for it) really gives it a lot of depth.
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