George Schuyler’s article “The Negro Art Hokum” argues that the notion of African-American culture as separate from national American culture is nonsense. To Schuyler, all seemingly distinct elements of African-American culture and artistic endeavors from such are influenced by the dominant white American culture, and therefore, only American. The merit of Schuyler’s argument stems from the fact that it is practically impossible for one culture to exist within the confines of another without absorbing certain characteristics. The problem with Schuyler’s argument that Langston Hughes notes in his response article, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” is that it assumes complete assimilation of African-Americans by a singular national culture. Fundamental to Hughes’ rebuttal is the allowance of a unique African-American culture extant of the standards of a singular American cultural identity. For Hughes, this unique culture lies within the working-class, out of sight of the American national culture. This culture, while neither completely African nor American, maintains the vibrant and unique roots of the African-American experience. Schuyler advocates cultural assimilation, while Hughes promotes cultural pluralism, in which minority cultures maintain their distinctive qualities in the face of a dominant national identity.
Throughout Anzia Yezierska’s novel “Bread Givers,” the character Sara Smolinsky goes through an elliptical journey from a rebellious youth appalled by the individual limitations of her cultural heritage to her gradual acceptance of her inability to escape her ancestry. At first rejecting her Orthodox Eastern European Jewish culture, Sara views the world in terms of a sole American identity. As ...
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...oreover, Hugo’s eager acceptance of Sara’s father and his cultural traditions draws Sara full circle into reconciliation with both her father and the traditional Jewish culture he personifies.
Sara Smolinsky’s culture, like the African-American culture promoted by Langston Hughes is neither purely Jewish nor American. As a student, Sara is not an American college student; as a teacher, Sara is not an American teacher. She is a Jewish-American student; she is a Jewish-American teacher. Her cultural identity is shaped by both worlds. She is Americanized to an extent, but her cultural origins remain distinct from those identified as purely American. Her American college education distanced her from the Old World culture embodied by her father, yet her return to the community marks the importance of—and the inability to remove herself entirely from— her roots.
Writing during the emergence of the “New Negro” movement, Claude McKay and Langston Hughes work to reconcile black life in white America. The trope used by the two poets within “The Harlem Dancer” and “The Weary Blues” is that of a performance and a single speaker’s recollection of it. While both depict an African-American performer presumably consumed by the isolation and oppression of their condition, the intensity of the performances prove to be vastly disparate. Hughes’ “The Weary Blues” features a much more transcendent performance than that of McKay’s “The Harlem Dancer” not only because of the relationship between the audience and the performer, but the degree of ubiquity in descriptions of the performer and the poetic form through which the performance is framed. While neither performer attempts to gain anything from their audience, the impact of their art on the speaker identifies the importance McKay placed on art as a means to build racial pride as well as Hughes interest in art as a means to communicate a common struggle.
The Negros Art Hokum and The Negros Artist and the Racial Mountain are well-known article written by African Americans George S. Schuyler and Langston Hughes and in which both of them argues about Negros Art in America. Both of the article were published 1926, The Negros Art Hokum was published One-Two weeks before the Racial Mountain because the racial mountain was a response to the Negros art Hokum. George Schuyler argues that Negro art doesn’t exist on his article The Negro Art Hokum, while Langston Hughes disagrees with Schuyler’s article and writes a response to his article and argues that everyone has right to be them self and everyone has their own beauty.
This chapter attempts to focus upon the problem of identity that confronted the African-Americans in America. Thus it investigates the African-American’s identity dilemma as shown in the poetry of Claude McKay and Langston Hughes. At the same time, it provides a solution for the African-American’s problem of estrangement and identity crisis. But while McKay’s self-rejection of his blackness urges him to trace the quest for identity in exile, Hughes’ self acceptance of his blackness enables him to reconcile with the white oppressors who stripped the black race from its identity. Moreover, it sheds light upon the psychological consequences that resulted from the violation of the African-American’s identity. Furthermore, this chapter shows the African-American’s self debasement, helplessness, and double consciousness that emanate from the sense of uprootedness.
Following the death of her mother and her father being tormented by his new wife, Sara, with her new lover Huge Seelig, decide to take him in. This decision is the product of her guilty conscience upon seeing her father old and alone on the street. When he contemplates whether or not he will decide to live with Sara and Hugo, Sara notes that she feels his tyranny once again. The book ends on a poignant line with Sara remarking that “I felt the shadow still there, over me. It wasn’t just my father, but the generations who made my father whose weight was still upon
In Harlem, New York the “New Negro” was born by various intellectuals, artists, musicians, and writers who celebrated cultural creativity and nobility throughout the African-American community. A span of ideas on what it meant to be African-American influenced many people to partake in art, music, and writing. During the 1920’s, the endless innovation made Harlem the “Mecca” for African-American civilization. Contributors and leaders recognized this as a resurrection of identity and spirituality which created, the “Harlem Renaissance.” Although the Harlem Renaissance shaped the African-American community substantially, there was still dispute. White Americans weren’t educated about African-American culture, segregation kept both races from coming together, and discrimination within the black community made light-skinned people suppose they were superior to dark-skinned people. When daylight transformed to nightlife, white people wanted to partake in the fun which usually brought along immense opportunities for writers and musicians.
As a young girl full of doubt and uncertainty, her “Father’s holiness filled her eyes with light”(16). He brightened her outlook on life, as she wasn’t able to see his imperfections at this age. Engraved in Sara’s head is the man whose praises lift her heart when there is little money to live off of, and Sara chooses to see only the selfless actions rather than the selfish ones. When Sara’s father refuses to pay the rent, he hits the collector lady, which Sara sees as “David killing Goliath, the giant,”(26). Sara is is in awe by this action and is thankful to have a selfless father whom stands up for his family. These select moments that she chooses to remember create a false image of him where he is represented as a selfless and caring man. This encourages her to always think of him when she believes she is in trouble or needs help. Sara longs for her father after she refuses to marry Max Goldstein, a man who seemed to be perfect, but only wanted a wife rather than someone to love. She thinks that her “refusal to marry Max Goldstein was something he could understand”(202). Sara always feels like she can go back to her father for help because she convinces herself that he is all knowing and genuinely great. Even though Sara Smolinsky may have left home because she finally realizes the harm her father causes, she always seems to fall back on the reassurance that her father is a hero. This false image
The most important factor that shapes Sara Smolinsky’s decision is individual time. She is characterized as an intrapersonal individual. She is very concerned about herself and her life goals. Unlike her sisters Sara sees beyond her parent’s beliefs and the poverty surrounding her. Throughout the novel Sara endeavors a transition between her old World on Hester street and her new world as a clean idealist. In the novel Sara continuously mentions her need to become a person in society. For instance, at her mother’s funerals she refuses to rend her garment to show grief (297). This shows how extreme Sara is about completely neglecting the Torah. This also gives an insight to how self-observed she is that doesn’t wouldn’t even respect her traditions
Like most, the stories we hear as children leave lasting impacts in our heads and stay with us for lifetimes. Hughes was greatly influenced by the stories told by his grandmother as they instilled a sense of racial pride that would become a recurring theme in his works as well as become a staple in the Harlem Renaissance movement. During Hughes’ prominence in the 20’s, America was as prejudiced as ever and the African-American sense of pride and identity throughout the U.S. was at an all time low. Hughes took note of this and made it a common theme to put “the everyday black man” in most of his stories as well as using traditional “negro dialect” to better represent his African-American brethren. Also, at this time Hughes had major disagreements with members of the black middle class, such as W.E.B. DuBois for trying to assimilate and promote more european values and culture, whereas Hughes believed in holding fast to the traditions of the African-American people and avoid having their heritage be whitewashed by black intellectuals.
No matter how hard she tries to separate herself from her family, she still feels an obligation to take care of them. When she was younger, Sara believed “[she] could escape [home] by running away” (295), but when she visits her father, she “realized that the shadow of the burden was always following [her], and here [she] stood face to face with it again” (295). Sara no longer views home as merely a location, but a sense of tradition that had been enforced by her father. Over the years, her father put his family through poverty and caused anguish for Sara and her sisters because of his unwillingness to stray from Jewish traditions. Sara developed a loathing toward her father and left him after he was cheated by the grocery store owner. However, Sara's anger and hatred toward her father dissipates once she understands that he is a true part of her. The values and ideals he always tried to impose upon her are the legacy of generations before him. Sara realizes that she had gained everything from him regardless of her hatred and therefore maintains her sense of family obligation. In understanding the motives of her father’s actions, Sara learns to love herself and the duty she feels toward her family. She concludes that she could no longer hate herself by hating her father, “Can I hate my arm, my hand that is part of me? [...] If
Many immigrants came to America during the 1920s in hopes of escaping the harsh poverty of their previous country. After the initial excitement of the new country wore off though, immigrants once again found themselves poverty stricken but this time, in America. The novel, Bread Givers, written by Anzia Yezierska, reveals the struggles that immigrants often encountered in the new world through the eyes of seventeen year old, Sara Smolinsky, and her family. The Smolinsky family immigrated from Russia to America in the 1920s and lived in a dirty, crowded street tenement on the Lower East Side of New York. Living with her three older sisters, mother, and father, Sara became fed up with the life which she was living. She had to work hard every
From the late 1890’s to the early 1920’s Anzia Yezierska’s novel Bread Givers illustrating the immigrant experience with generational conflict. During the 1890’s to the 1920’s a massive influx of new immigrants, primarily from Southern and Eastern Europe resulted in the Americanization movement. These restrictions on immigration came from the western frontier closing, fast paced industrialization, city and rural emigration, economic distress and labor conflicts. Within cities immigrants were grouped into specific neighborhoods; the Jewish Religion was placed on the Lower East Side of New York City. The primary source of conflict between emigrants and their children at the turn of the twentieth century was Americanization.
2. The African American culture blossomed during the Harlem Renaissance, particularly in creative arts, and the most influential movement in African American literary history. Embracing literary, musical, theatrical, and visual arts, participants sought to reconceptualize “the Negro” apart from the white stereotypes that had influenced black peoples’ relationship to their heritage and to each other. They also sought to break free of Victorian moral values and bourgeois shame about aspects of their lives that might, as seen by whites, reinforce racist beliefs. Never dominated by a particular school of thought but rather characterized by intense debate, the movement laid the groundwork for all later African American literature and had an enormous
Anzia Yezierska has written two short story collections and four novels about the struggles of Jewish immigrants on New York’s Lower East Side. Yezierska stories explore the subject of characters’ struggling with the disillusioning America of poverty and exploitation while they search for the ‘real’ America of their ideals. She presents the struggles of women against family, religious injunctions, and social-economic obstacles in order to create for herself an independent style. Her stories all incorporate autobiographical components. She was not a master of style, plot development or characterization, but the intensity of feeling and aspiration are evident in her narratives that overrides her imperfections.
“I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” (Martin Luther King Jr., “I had a dream speech”). Racism, a strong weapon used against equality. Langston Hughes portrayed his view of societal racism in poetry and songs. Quite a strong soldier in the war against prejudice, his train of thought was precisely what society needs, yet fears. Racism should be distinguished, but is as strong as ever. The end of its reign would enhance the ability of minorities in terms of jobs, societal acceptance, and life in general. Langston Hughes communicates his theme of racism and overcoming it through his use of Symbolism, Tone, and Anthropomorphism.
Hughes explains the awareness of the black uprising and racial breakdown stories of submission essential to African Americans about the time of slavery. Weakening the traditional idea of what negroes were forced to think their lives were like for the past three hundred years. Hughes’s Harlem Renaissance poetry not only condemns white oppression, but it also disproves the condition of being lower class which was pointed toward black people being left out of human history. After the Harlem Renaissance, Hughes left his trends of poetry to move on to a Marxist art prioritizing social and political narratives that reflected on the interest of his people. Hughes’s shift from folklore poetry to revolutionary poetry in the 1930’s, is explained in his poem “White Man” where racial conflicts between blacks and whites is replaced with class struggle of most economic exploration and capitalism