Johnson offered black writers the challenge of being linked to other cultural movements around the world like the Irish or Czech, national ethnic pride. The major American poets who exerted any particular degree of influence on the Harlem Renaissance were E.A Robinson and Carl Sandburg. The significance of Alain Locke's anthology was how it combined work from both black and white writers and raised racial awareness with a desire for literacy and art. Jean Toomer's Cane significance is the illustrations of several of the peculiar challenges and opportunities of the nascent movement. The content of Jean Toomer's Cane consisted of high volumes of poems that opened with evocative portraits of black south to blacks in northern cities.
Daniel Hamilton 5/6/10 Research Paper Alvarez, Julia Julia Alvarez is a Dominican, Hyphen, and American poet. She is a fairly new poet just coming through in the final decades from the century. Alvarez insists and truly elaborates in her writing on importance of essential ties of what she recalls torn and broken by competing with languages and how living in two different parts of the country is effective today, and she lets us in first hand on what is it like. Alvarez has completed a few but very popular novels and many thoughtful, visual poems. Her writing is so popular and well known because it is a deep, dark, and true perspective of how living in a different country, and moving to a new country has an effect on everyone and what exactly happens.
Edna won an award for her book called The Harp-Weaver; the award was called Pulitzer Prize. Edna first major book of poetry was published in 1971 called Renascence. Then “A Few Figs from Thistle” was published in 1922 and got some people attention as well as controversy with its feminist learning (Modern American
Hughes expresses how black people represent a key part of America’s formation. He argues that Black people are just as deserving as whites to call themselves American. DuBois writes how the blacks as a people have made an impact in the world, giving reference to the great pyramids of Egypt. Both of these writers discuss how blacks are deserving of recognition as a vital part of America’s success. The poem “I Too” shows the blacks as a whole as being a neglected “brother” in a family.
Philosophers saw it as an opportunity to put African American issues at a place of importance. Some also considered it jus a strategic business opportunity for publishers, theatre producers, and other entrepreneurs during the 1920s and 30s. The most voiced opinion was that of the African Americans who participated in this “New Negro Movement”. Especially the Blacks whose lives were documented, affected, and imitated in the artwork and theatre productions of that time frame. The importance of Harlem as the origin of the renaissance in the visual arts in the 1920s and 30s is highly questionable.
Even though Biography of a Runaway Slave was written much time later, way after the abolishment of slavery it’s intention was to give people a powerful descriptive story of what it was like to live in times that Esteban lived in our current times and it does a great job in telling a story of a runaway slave. Miguel’s style of writing shows true feelings of what Esteban felt about different types of slaves and what they meant to him. “Truth is that the blacks were honest.” (pg. 26) Many of the testimonials coming from Esteban are raw and he does not hold back. Every word is the truth and it gives a more sense of realness to the narrative.
Behind every story lies a bittersweet message that sheds light on a shady subject. We remember his narrative as our glimpse into the depths of the unspoken truth. So in the effort to make his statement, the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, was a way to expose the dehumanization of slaves to an insensible society, and to fuel the approaching, national abolition. Douglass wastes no time in his vivid description of his early life. He states that, “I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it,” (Douglass, L. 3).
In 1958, she married husband, Harold Morrison (Johnson Lewis 2010). But later divorced in 1964, she took their two sons and moved back to Lorain, Ohio, then to New York where she worked as senior editor in Random House (Johnson Lewis 2010). Her first novel was written in 1970, “The Bluest Eye”. After numerous other publications, in 1987, she won a Pulitzer Prize for her novel, “Beloved” (Liukkonen 2008). In 1992 Morrison published “Jazz”, which won her a Nobel Prize for Literature, she was the eighth woman and first black woman to be awarded this honor (Johnson Lewis 2010).
Of the many African American authors during this significant time period was Claude McKay. According to “The Harlem Renaissance” by Richard Worth, McKay’s poems express the many angles of the black experience (39). Of his many poems, one of the most influential was his poem “Harlem Shadows.” In “Harlem Shadows,” McKay refers to society ignoring the fact that young African American girls are forced into prostitution: “Ah, stern harsh world, that in the wretched way of poverty, dishonor and disgrace, has pushed the timid little feet of clay, the sacred brown feet of my fallen race!”(McKay) Another literary piece written by McKay was his novel Home to Harlem. In this novel he described the everyday lives of Harlem residents and emphasized its music, lifestyles, etc. (Worth, 41).
In the United States of America people are always influenced by events of the past or by the words of others. The youth of America along with its easily influenced attitudes and the nihilistic way of living has shaped our country into something it never used to be. W.E.B DuBois and Cornel West are two writers from different eras of American History. The two works, Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois and Democracy Matters by Cornel West, draw strong comparisons as well as many differences into the way black culture has influenced the shaping of America.