A New Perspective
Poets in American history have struggled over time to create or find a distinct American voice among the many different cultural influences and borrowed styles. Each era of poets contributed to the search in a slightly different way, but it was the modernists that really sought to make poetry new. A group to these modernists, called the expatriates, thought that the only way to obtain a new voice would be to escape any ties with old traditions, and to leave the country that held them captive in an inspirationaless environment. Turned off by America, they left for Europe only to rediscover America, and in turn, contribute enormously to the growth and development of the American voice.
Many reasons surround the great expatriate movement but the majority left because they felt America had nothing to offer but oppression. Writers in America were viewed as suspicious and were given no respect (Couteau, 1). Europe offered artistic freedom unlike the leftover American Puritanism and new commercialism that were hostile to the writer (Earnest, 254). William Carlos Williams stated that this heritage had produced "a race incapable of flower," and that America had "become the most lawless country in the civilized world...a generation of gross know-nothingism, of blackened churches where hymns groan like chants from stupefied jungles" (Earnest, 254). Ezra Pound echoed the artists' complaints in his poem The Rest (Ellmann, 500).
O helpless few in my country,
O remnant enslaved!
Artists broken against her,
A-stray, lost in the villages,
Mistrusted, spoken-against,
Lovers of beauty, starved
Thwarted with systems,
Helpless against the control;
You who can not wear yourselves out
By persisting to successes...
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...ions from Gordon Dahlquist.
Gertrude Stein...A new Music Opera. Copyright 2000
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"Literary Paris in the 1920's and 1930's." http://ntsrv2000.educ.ualberta.ca/nethowto/examples/bradley/mansfiel/paris.htm.
McCarthy, Harold T. The Expatriate Perspective. New Jersey: Associated University Presses, Inc. 1974.
Pioch, Nicolas. "Picasso and Cubism." Webmuseum, Paris. Dec 31, 1995
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"The Rest." The New Oxford Book of American Verse. Ed. Richard Ellmann. New York: Oxford UP, 1976. 500-501.
Rodenbeck, Judith. Insistent Presence in Picasso's Portrait of Gertrude Stein. Columbia University, 1995.
http://www.showgate.com/tots/picasso/picstein.html
Hyperlinked version researched, formatted and updated: Jun., 1996/Jan., 1998/Mar., 1999/Dec., 1999 by Robert Fisher.
Robinson, Edward Arlington. "Richard Cory." The Pocket Book of Modern Verse. New York: Washington Square Press, 1954. 153.
My grandmother sent me a letter from home, telling the success story of her old Chinese tenants who, through hard work, had become very wealthy in the 9 short years they lived in America. My grandmother embraces the belief that "with hard work, patience and a little help from the model minority stereotype, someday Asians will gain full approval of white America". She believes that Asian Americans are inherently smarter, more diligent and thrifty than other racial minorities of our time. I, on the other hand, am skeptical towards this assumed advantage that other minorities have perceived as "elevators to the ladder of success" in American society. While Asian Americans are able to achieve acculturation by gaining material success, despite this economic advancement, they are unable to assimilate socially into mainstream America because of prejudice and discrimination.
The concept of America changes through these authors poems and short stories . They all portray American society in different manners, and reveal their opinions on issues through various literary methods. Although they all analyze and write about different issues, they are all intertwined by the concept of society in America.
It was from all this extraordinary strength that Alice found her strength,her mother handed down respect for the possibilities as she prepares the art that is her gift. She wrote about how our mother and grandmothers were been enslaved and were put to work so hard that they didn 't get the time to search for their inner gift. Alice advocated that women should use their mind and thought than been a baby bearer. That African American women then have gone through a lot of abuse and its time to wake up from what the society think of them and use their artistic talent that they were born
When a writer starts his work, most often than not, they think of ways they can catch their reader’s attention, but more importantly, how to awake emotions within them. They want to stand out from the rest and to do so, they must swim against the social trend that marks a specific society. That will make them significant; the way they write, how they make a reader feel, the specific way they write, and the devotion they have for their work. Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgard Allan Poe influenced significantly the American literary canon with their styles, themes, and forms, making them three important writers in America.
The media purposely reports about the fact that “[m]ost Asian Americans (49 percent) have college degrees compared with all other U.S. adults (28 percent)” (Lee 376) as well as their ability to “[outscore]outscored other racial groups on the math portion of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) year after year” (Lee 376). These types of discussions causes people to believe that all Asian Americans succeed academically, which perpetuates the model minority stereotype. Considering the fact that other minoritized groups have negative stigmas, some may argue that Asian Americans should appreciate the positive label, “model minority.” Although a positive stereotype may seem beneficial, it can
However, Asians are rapidly becoming a greater force in American culture as the proportion of educated Asian-Americans rises. Despite small numbers, they begin to have more and more influence in the business and professional worlds as well as academics. They are an interesting group, however, caught between two extremely different cultures as they seek to strike a balance between the ideals of their parents and the world they live in.
As a second generation Asian American, I have not experienced much discrimination, since I have grown up surrounded by the American language and culture. However, after reading Strangers from a Different Shore, I realized that Asian Americans today are experiencing a new type of prejudice: “The Myth of the ‘Model Minority’” (474).` This stems from Asians’ success in school and in their jobs. The stereotypical idea of “Asian parents” also contributes to this misconception. The media helped spread the idea of this “super minority.” The New Republic praised the “Triumph of Asian-Americans” as “America’s greatest success story,” and CBS’s 60 Minutes presented a glowing report on Asian’s achievements in academics (475). This misconception leads many teachers and employers to assume that all Asians are intelligent beings and little powerhouses of work.
For 20 years, Asian Americans have been portrayed by the press and the media as a successful minority. Asian Americans are believed to benefit from astounding achievements in education, rising occupational statuses, increasing income, and are problem-fee in mental health and crime. The idea of Asian Americans as a model minority has become the central theme in media portrayal of Asian Americans since the middle 1960s. The term model minority is given to a minority group that exhibits middle class characteristics, and attains some measure of success on its own without special programs or welfare. Asian Americans are seen as a model minority because even though they have faced prejudice and discrimination by other racial groups, they have succeeded socially, economically, and educationally without resorting to political or violent disagreements with the majority race. The “success” of the minority is offered as proof that the American dream of equal opportunity is capable to those who conform and who are willing to work hard. Therefore, the term ...
Poetry’s role is evaluated according to what extent it mirrors, shapes and is reshaped by historical events. In the mid-19th century, some critics viewed poetry as “an expression of the poet’s personality, a manifestation of the poet’s intuition and of the social and historical context which shaped him” ( Preminger, Warnke, Hardison 511). Analysis of the historical, social, political and cultural events at a certain time helps the reader fully grasp a given work. The historical approach is necessary in order for given allusions to be situated in their social, political and cultural background. In order to escape intentional fallacy, a poet should relate his work to universal
Alice Walker is an African American essayist, novelist and poet. She is described as a “black feminist.”(Ten on Ten) Alice Walker tries to incorporate the concepts of her heritage that are absent into her essays; such things as how women should be independent and find their special talent or art to make their life better. Throughout Walker’s essay entitled “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” I determined there were three factors that aided Walker gain the concepts of her heritage which are through artistic ability, her foremothers and artistic models.
Thesis Statement: Alice Walker, a twentieth and twenty- first century novelist is known for her politically and emotionally charged works, which exposes the black culture through various narrative techniques.
The Asian American community in the contemporary period face a lot of race relation issues which all interconnect within each other. Asian Americans face the basis of “Model Minority” that purportedly whitens Asians leading to the belief that there are no issues such as racism and poverty within the Asian American community. With that, they face the issue that there is no racial discrimination against Asian Americans due to the racial barrier being contextualized within a “black or white” framework. Another problem they face is mainstream America’s lack of awareness to the diversity of the Asian population, which causes a lot of misperceptions and misdirected racial hatred towards certain ethnicities within the Asian race. This causes the Pan-Asian community to not be supportive, unwilling to support each other, in order to avoid racism by avoiding being associated with that ethnicity just because they look alike. This causes the Asian American community and the ethnic groups within to be invisible to the American community as they lack organization and unification to have their voices heard.
Masson, Davis. Essays Biographical and Critical: Chiefly on English Poets. La Vergne, Tennessee: Lightning Source, Inc., 2007.
We’ve all heard it said that Asian Americans are good at math; anything involving science, technology, and medicine. They study all the time, work really hard, and live a version of the American dream many of us never thought to dream of. And of course, we know these stereotypes are dangerous and often untrue, but perhaps we still find ourselves buying into them. Ronald Takaki”, the ethnic studies expert, writes about the idea that Asian Americans are more successful than any other American minority group in his article “The Harmful Myth of Asian Superiority. Takaki refutes this idea by strategically, and somewhat effectively, using reason, statistics, and word choice to show that Asian Americans still face some of the same hardships and barriers