Comparing Manazar Gamboa's Memories Around A Bulldozed Barrio

1839 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Dream deferred poem analysis

Manazar Gamboa’s Memories Around a Bulldozed Barrio and Langston Hughes Montage of a deferred Dream demonstrate two communities transitioning to different communal structures. Larger society homogenizes both poem’s characters to arbitrary molds that are composed to the assumed collective common characteristics of race and gender. Although in Montage of a Dream Deferred white society representation is minimal, the narrator’s presumptions about other people in the community blends with the public collective attitude. Gesellschaft mangles the individual African-American conception, and as a result, the poem’s narrators predetermine people according to a negative scale associated with a degree of darkness or values attributed to ‘womanness’ which …show more content…

For although the narrator understands the complexity of his own community, he fails to enfranchise his judgement from the collective. Thus the guidelines of what constructs the broken community of the narrators reshape to not be determined according to color nor even ethnicity, as “Sometimes I think / Jews must have heard /the music of a / dream deferred. /” (Likewise 27-30) breaks down the ethnic boundary and redefines—their fragmented community—as the people undergoing common circumstances within his circumferential ecosystem. However, in contrast, Memories of a Bulldozed Barrio retains Gemeinschaft as a result of their circumferential ecosystem is built by socialist labor and an ideal to “raise a Mexican village, . . . all within the confines of this gringo city”(Gamboa 34), for the community is symbolically reclaiming land previously lost. Hughe’s collective poem represents a Gemeinschaft “in transition” (Hughes 1) to a capitalist Gesellschaft represented in the poetic discourse that reveals the narrator’s dispositions toward African Americans and representation of women, while on the other hand, Memories of a Bulldozed Bario is “a community in transition” (1) to a socialist Gemeinschaft represented in the constructing of an ethnic

Show More
Related

  • A Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes and My Little Dreams by Georgia Douglas Johnson

    793 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement during the 1920s and 1930s, in which African-American art, music and literature flourished. It was significant in many ways, one, because of its success in destroying racist stereotypes and two, to help African-Americans convey their hard lives and the prejudice they experienced. In this era, two distinguished poets are Langston Hughes, who wrote the poem “A Dream Deferred” and Georgia Douglas Johnson who wrote “My Little Dreams”. These two poems address the delayment of justice, but explore it differently, through their dissimilar uses of imagery, tone and diction.

    Read More

  • Hyperbole The Landlord

    556 Words  | 2 Pages

    The 1930’s were an interesting time for many African-Americans. Even though they had been freed from slavery decades ago, they still felt oppression. Langston Hughes does a fantastic job of describing this oppression in the poem “Ballad of the Landlord”. The author’s purpose for writing this poem is to show the problems that African-Americans dealt with in the 1930’s which is exemplified through the use of hyperbole, change of lines in stanzas, and repetition.

    Read More

  • Foreshadowing In Three Dirges

    1090 Words  | 3 Pages

    A sense of ominous foreboding permeates the woeful passage from "Three Dirges." The conflict is immediately apparant: "Don Lazaro, you've got five boys in Comitan teaching the campesinos how to read. That's subversive. That's communist. So tonight, you have to kill them." Don Lazaro, the mayor of the war torn village, San Martin Comitan, seems to have no choice but to carry out this heartless command. His response is indicative of a desperate man searching for answers, yet already resigned to carrying out the task at hand. "What can I say? --you tell me!" cries an anguished Don Lazaro to the villagers. Is he pleading for their understanding, or asking for a miraculous solution that would alter the path that lay before him? It is this uncertainty that, when coupled with melancholy foreshadowing, leaves the reader at a suspenseful crossroad; suspecting that events are transpiring, but doubtful as to the outcome.

    Read More

  • Review Of "the City Of Mexico In The Age Of Diaz"

    1068 Words  | 3 Pages

    A growing affluent class called upon the Diaz regime and imported architects to construct buildings in the Zocalo to reflect a “proper” image that drew on influences from Europe and the United States. Johns recognizes the architectural dependence of the influential Mexicans constructing Mexico City when he states, “Mexican architecture, on the other hand, was an expression of a city run by a people who were looking to create their own culture while entirely dependent on the industry and ideas of Europe and America” (22). The same construction that the elite felt was a celebration of a newfound dignity in the Mexican people was criticized, by visitors and locals alike, as grandiose and a futile effort to shield the native roots of a circle of imposters. Johns’s argues that the “Mexicans knew little of their adopted European tradition, had acquired even less of its taste, and enjoyed none of its tranquility” (23). While the influence on the Westside led to development, the squalor and lack of authority of the peasants on the Eastside created mesones, or as Johns described them, “…a little more than ‘a bare spot to lie down in, a grass mat, company with (the) vermin that squalor breeds…’” (48). Politics on the Westside of the Zocalo were concerned little with the living conditions of the majority. No one would undertake the unglamorous task of assisting the poor, but rather they attempted to veil the masses in the shadow of their refined buildings and recent assumption of culture.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Francisco Cantú's Essay 'Bajadas'

    768 Words  | 2 Pages

    Several encounters shape how the author sees migrants and increase his disagreement with the ideals he learned in the academy. As he tries to help a mother looking for his son, the idea of a humanized man evokes. He understands that people care for the migrants and he feels identified with the woman’s attitude, as he has seen it in his

    Read More

  • How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

    1942 Words  | 4 Pages

    of the native tongue is lost , certain holidays may not be celebrated the same , and American born generations feel that they might have lost their identity , making it hard to fit in either cultures . Was is significant about this book is the fact it’s like telling a story to someone about something that happened when they were kid . Anyone can relate because we all have stories from when we were kids . Alvarez presents this method of writing by making it so that it doesn’t feel like it’s a story about Latin Americans , when

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Diles Que No Me Maten By Juan Rulfo

    1646 Words  | 4 Pages

    The themes explored in the novel illustrate a life of a peasant in Mexico during the post-revolution, important themes in the story are: lack of a father’s role model, death and revenge. Additionally, the author Juan Rulfo became an orphan after he lost

    Read More

  • Langston Hughes And The Harlem Renaissance

    634 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...ss, representing the truth of the times. The majority of the problems influence only the one dreamer, however, the ending suggests that, when despair is everywhere, it may "explode" and cause social and political uprising. “Harlem” brings to light the anxiety between the need for Negro expression and the opposition to that need because of society’s subjugation of its black populace. His lines confront the racist and unjust attitude common in American society before the civil rights movement of the 1960s. it expresses the belief that black wishes and dreams were irrelevant should be ignored. His closing rhetorical question—“Or does [a dream deferred] explode?”—is aggressive, a testimony that the inhibition of black dreams might result in a revolution. It places the blame for this possible revolution on the domineering society that forces the deferment of the dream.

    Read More

  • Biography of Langston Hughes

    1369 Words  | 3 Pages

    ... They focus more on the cultural aspects of identity that Hughes is very proud of, while poems “Democracy” and “Theme for English B” touch on some of the social concerns that created a struggle for dignity as a black person in the early/mid twentieth century. The “Democracy” is a slightly stern and direct request to take action and fight for civil rights. The “Theme for English B” is a compassionate and low-key personal anecdote that reiterates the unpracticed concept that “all men are created equal”. Despite the difference in tone and subject, all four poems relate to the central theme that dignity is something that white men may take for granted, but Langston Hughes, as a black man and a writer, sees and feels dignity as a fight and a struggle that he faces and that the black community as a whole faces every day.

    Read More

  • Spanish El Recado

    1251 Words  | 3 Pages

    Elena Poniatowska escrita durante una epoca de cambio en Mexico. Antes de sus obras las mujeres mexicanas eran sometidos, docil, y pasivo. En la tiempo de sus obras las mujeres estaba tratando salir de los estereotipos de antes. Esta problema social tomo un afecto en Elena. Aunque ella no viene de un movimiento literatura directamente, ella escrita con el concepto de compremetido. En su narrative El Recado ella crea un mujer estereotipical que no puede controlar sus emociones. La titula es eso porque ella viene a ver su amante, pero el no esta, asi ella escribe las cosas que sentia. La perspectiva es de un personaje y ella nunca interacta con otros personajes. En facto la unica descripcion de un personaje otro de la protagonista es de su amante Martin. Habla de otros personajes, pero solamente de sus acciones. Porque ellas es la unica perspectiva que tenemos es sencillo a sentar compasion para una protagonista de quien nombre no aun sabemos. Ella da la descripcion de toda que vea, y mas importante todo que se sienta. Tambien tropos y figuras retoricas dan un tono significante al poema. Estos sentimientos de la portagonista y el tono emocional de la narrativa transporta una tema de una mujer estereotipical y debil quien quiere ser reconocido.

    Read More

  • T.S. Eliot, Langston Hughes and Modern Poetry

    840 Words  | 2 Pages

    To analyze Hughes’s poem thoroughly, by using Eliot’s argumentative essay, we must first identify the poem’s speaker and what is symbolic about the speaker? The title (“The Negro Speaks Of Rivers”) of the poem would hint off the speaker’s racial identity, as the word Negro represents the African-American race not only in a universal manner, but in it’s own individual sphere. T.S. Eliot’s essay, mentions that “every nation, every race, has not its own creative, but its own critical turn of mind”(549). In another sense, different societies have their own characteristics, however, with a racial mixture, shadowed elements can be formed. If one were to analyze in between the lines of Eliot’s essay and Hughes’s poem, he...

    Read More

  • How it Feels to be Colored Me by Hurston and Hughes’ The Negro Mother

    1238 Words  | 3 Pages

    Both Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes were great writers but their attitudes towards their personal experience as an African American differed in many ways. These differences can be attributed to various reasons that range from gender to life experience but even though they had different perceptions regarding the African American experience, they both shared one common goal, racial equality through art. To accurately delve into the minds of the writers’ one must first consider authors background such as their childhood experience, education, as well their early adulthood to truly understand how it affected their writing in terms the similarities and differences of the voice and themes used with the works “How it Feels to be Colored Me” by Hurston and Hughes’ “The Negro Mother”. The importance of these factors directly correlate to how each author came to find their literary inspiration and voice that attributed to their works.

    Read More

  • Analysis of Langston Hughes' Poems on Slavery

    1834 Words  | 4 Pages

    Thesis: The poems “Negro”, “I Too”, and “Song for a Dark Girl” by Langston Hughes was written around an era of civil inequality. A time when segregation was a customary thing and every African American persevered through civil prejudice. Using his experience, he focuses his poems on racial and economic inequality. Based on his biographical information, he uses conflict to illustrate the setting by talking about hardships only a Negro would comprehend and pride only a Negro can experience, which helps maintain his racial inequality theme.

    Read More

  • Black Poetry

    2173 Words  | 5 Pages

    Over the course of the century chronicling the helm of slavery, the emancipation, and the push for civil, equal, and human rights, black literary scholars have pressed to have their voice heard in the midst a country that would dare classify a black as a second class citizen. Often, literary modes of communication were employed to accomplish just that. Black scholars used the often little education they received to produce a body of works that would seek to beckon the cause of freedom and help blacks tarry through the cruelties, inadequacies, and inconveniences of their oppressed condition. To capture the black experience in America was one of the sole aims of black literature. However, we as scholars of these bodies of works today are often unsure as to whether or not we can indeed coin the phrase “Black Literature” or, in this case, “Black poetry”. Is there such a thing? If so, how do we define the term, and what body of writing can we use to determine the validity of the definition. Such is the aim of this essay because we can indeed call a poem “Black”. We can define “Black poetry” as a body of writing written by an African-American in the United States that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of an experience or set of experiences inextricably linked to black people, characterizes a furious call or pursuit of freedom, and attempts to capture the black condition in a language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm. An examination of several works of poetry by various Black scholars should suffice to prove that the definition does hold and that “Black Poetry” is a term that we can use.

    Read More

  • An Analysis Of Langston Hughes's 'Dream Deferred'

    1082 Words  | 3 Pages

    The poem begins by introducing the limitations of the African Americans’ hopes and dreams in the form of a question. Hughes asks, “What happens to a dream deferred” (1). Here, the dream refers to the African Americans’ yearning for equality and freedom, and Hughes wants to examine what happens when that dream is persistently pushed aside. The spacing directly after this line conjures a sense of silence as if allowing a moment to contemplate the question. The lines following this question explore several possible outcomes, and each answer represents the ruin of a forgotten dream.

    Read More

More about Comparing Manazar Gamboa's Memories Around A Bulldozed Barrio

Open Document