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Racism in literature
Effects of slavery on slaves
Effects of slavery on slaves
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Recommended: Racism in literature
White poets generally do not discuss race in their poems because they do not feel comfortable with the subject as they do not have firsthand experience. In an effort to not insult anyone or appear disingenuous, they avoid the topic all together. Unfortunately, this only perpetuates the issue and makes white poets appear as if they do not recognize African Americans and only care about the white perspective. However, black poets openly discuss racism in their works. They face the discrimination head on in their poems to raise awareness and express their feelings. Both Natahsa Tretheway and Major Jackson were part of a group of black poets called the Dark Room Collective that shared their poems and feelings on the black experience. If …show more content…
“A Mystifying Silence” states that people are pretending it is better off to have a race-less society when it is clearly not. Race needs to be attended to, even though it is sometimes uncomfortable to bring up. “Writing White” expresses that many people would write about race from personal experience and many whites feel as though they cannot relate. This is why they often are nervous to mention race in their writing. “Whiteness Visible” deals with whites being in a racial fog to distance them from the history of race. This is not good because then it allows the racial issues to be unsettled. All three poems correlate in the sense of race being revealed or not. It is an essential topic to be declared, but only in the correct form. These pieces illustrate how some whites are anxious to speak about race, but they know it is crucial to be brought to …show more content…
Where the roads, buildings, and monuments are named to honor the Confederacy, where that old flag still hangs, I return to Mississippi, state that made a crime of me—mulatto, half-breed—native in my native land, this place they’ll bury me (23-34).” Trethewey identifies with the black soldiers feeling of isolation in the war as she was banished in her home town due to her being from a mixed race family. She suffered racism from both the whites and blacks growing up and this poem allows her to express the banishment she felt. She compares her exile to the soldiers who had been slaves. Another one of Trethwey’s themes is based on her mother, who is “colored” as they put it on her birth certificate, who died at young age. “When Ms. Trethewey was 19 and in college, her mother was murdered by her second husband, an abusive man she had divorced, and the effort of trying to recover her mother 's memory is one of Ms. Trethewey 's other major themes.” (McGrath, page 3). When this tragic death occurred, Trethewey knew she should become a poet and started writing. “”It took me nearly 20 years to find the right language, to write poems
...ve interest was free born and wished to marry her. However, after Harriet?s attempts to pursued her master to sell her to the young neighbor failed she was left worse off than before. Dr. Norcom was so cruel he forbade Harriet anymore contact with the young man. Harriet?s next love came when she gave birth to her first child. Her son Benny was conceived as a way to get around Dr. Norcom?s reign of terror. However, this is a subject that was very painful for her. She conveys to the reader that she has great regret for the length she went to stop her Master. Along with her own guilt she carries the memories of her Grandmother?s reaction to the news of her pregnancy. Clearly this was a very traumatic time in Harriet?s life. In light of these difficult events Harriet once again found love and hope in her new born son. ?When I was most sorely oppressed I found solace in his smiles. I loved to watch his infant slumber: but always there was a dark cloud over my enjoyment. I could never forget that he was a slave.? (Jacobs p. 62)
Sociologists often employ intersectionality theory to describe and explain facets of human interactions. This particular methodology operates on the notion that sociologically defining characteristics, such as that of race, gender, and class, are not independent of one another but function simultaneously to determine our individual social experiences. This is evident in poetry as well. The combination of one poet’s work that expresses issues on class with another poet’s work that voices issues on race, and so forth, can be analyzed through a literary lens, and collectively embody the sociological intersectionality theory.
“Thus had died and been laid to rest in the most quiet, unostentatious way the most useful and distinguished woman America had yet produced,” (Wilson, Pg. 342).
It is very likely that Louise Erdrich experienced some kind of racism or prejudice in her lifetime. Segregation laws were still in use while she was growing up in the fifties, and in the sixties, many of the same people still felt racist, with or without the laws. Boarding schools were not an exception to this fact either. School authorities probably did take advantage of the fact that boarding schools are away from home and not under the watchful eye of any parent. This poem demonstrates the truth of what it really felt and feels like to have lived through such bad treatment. It is disturbing to think that instead of just learning at school, Louise Erdrich, amongst other children, may have learned what it felt like to be hated. At such early ages, they taught these children that the way they were treated was how the world was supposed to be. It displays the painful scars embedded so deeply into a child, from a time that should have been the most nurturing part of his/her life.
Antoinette’s relationship with Tia represents several values for her. Their relationship embodies several racial metaphors. Tia is the symbol of the person Antoinette greatly desires to be but never could. She embodies the black character that is free from alienation that is accepted by her community, unlike Antoinette who is neither black nor white. She struggles to decipher her own identity. The novel opens with the portrayal of the Cosways’ ruin after the emancipation, due to the fact that they formerly owned black slaves. They call them white cockroaches ‘I never looked at any strange negro. They hated us. They called us white cockroaches’ (Pt1 Pg 9). They do however find security with some of the blacks, namely the ones that are not from Jamaican decent, such as Christophine and Tia. Antoinette not only finds herself in the hatred of the black community but also the new English Colonists reject them due to their long intimacy with blacks and due to the fact that they are ‘Creole’ and not English labeling them ‘white niggers’. Therefore Tia represent a girl of approximately Antoinette’s age, someone she can relate to, that is black and therefore has the privilege of being accepted into society. She was strong unlike Antoinette ‘sharp stones did not hurt her feet, I never saw her cry’ (Pt1 Pg9), therefore she looked for strength, comfort and a sense of belonging with her.
...brought with it discrimination of African American women, “They were targets of brutality, the butt of jokes and ridicule, and their womanhood was denied over and over. It was a struggle just to stay free, and an even greater struggle to define womanhood” (162). As the men fought the war the women who were now dependent upon themselves more than ever had to take on the role of the father. The Mammy figure now stood up for herself and would often times leave the white family, the family they left would often have feelings of remorse for their tremendous loss. Women were standing up for themselves and where now the maker of their own destiny, but with that still came the harsh reality that they would be still the most vulnerable group in antebellum America. Many single African American women were faced with poverty and had a really hard time dealing with the war and depending on themselves. Deborah Gray White’s view of slave women shows us that their role was truly unique, they faced the harsh reality that they were not only women or African American, they were both, so therefore their experience was one of a kind and they lived through it, triumphed, and finally won their freedom.
In the poem “White Lies” by Natasha Tretheway the narrator opens the poem with vivid imagery about a bi-racial little girl who is trying to find her true identity between herself and others around her. She tells little lies about being fully white because she feels ashamed and embarrassed of her race and class and is a having a hard time accepting reality. The poem dramatizes the conflict between fitting in and reality. The narrator illustrates this by using a lot imagery, correlations and connotation to display a picture of lies. The narrator’s syntax, tone, irony and figurative language help to organize her conflict and address her mother’s disapproval.
The poem with the same title as the collection ’’I am not a racist but…’’ she uses satire to show how easy racism is not recognised or played down. She was hurt at a very young age by racist attitude and words as she wrote about her school years in the poem ‘’Making...
Ramazani, J. (1994). Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy From Hardy to Heaney. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
The four poems by Langston Hughes, “Negro,” “Harlem,” “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” and “Theme for English B” are all powerful poems and moving poems! Taken all together they speak to the very founding of relations of whites and blacks all the way down through history. The speaker in the poem the, “Negro” and also, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” tells the tale of freedom and enslavement that his people have endured, and it heralds their wisdom and strength. The poems “Harlem” and “Theme for English B” speaks to the continuous unfair treatment that the blacks have received at the hands of white people throughout the years.
Even as a child, Thelma Lucille Sayles, or Lucille Clifton, realized how notable African Americans were. However, throughout her lifetime, Clifton has encountered discrimination against her race on multiple occasions, but her poetry, for both adults and children, show resilience against any racist remarks made. With a heavy influence from growing up in an African-American household and experiencing the Civil Rights Movement, Lucille Clifton’s writings focus on the importance of African Americans, especially women, in communities (Hine 1-3).
The poem also focuses on what life was like in the sixties. It tells of black freedom marches in the South how they effected one family. It told of how our peace officers reacted to marches with clubs, hoses, guns, and jail. They were fierce and wild and a black child would be no match for them. The mother refused to let her child march in the wild streets of Birmingham and sent her to the safest place that no harm would become of her daughter.
the life of Harlem and knew that equality and freedom was definitely not present. The poem portrays
It is a way to crucially engage oneself in setting the stage for new interventions and connections. She also emphasized that she personally viewed poetry as the embodiment of one’s personal experiences, and she challenged what the white, European males have imbued in society, as she declared, “I speak here of poetry as the revelation or distillation of experience, not the sterile word play that, too often, the white fathers distorted the word poetry to mean — in order to cover their desperate wish for imagination without insight.”
Five years later her father retired from his job to take care of all of the children and happened upon Lazarus’ poetry notebooks. After reading them and taking a great liking to them, he carried the poems off without Lazarus’ consent and had them published for private circulation. When Lazarus was informed, her poems had already received much praise so, adding t...