Assignment II Mckay, Hurston, Hughes, J. Johnson, and Wright "Harlem Renaissance"

Assignment Two "Harlem Renaissance"

Claude McKay
In Mckay’s poetry I sensed a strong feeling of displacement from his poem “Outkast”. It is almost as if he wished to return to the “peace” of the “dark jungle” but instead was held captive here in his new home. What held him captive? Knowing of his financial disabilities which he blamed (rightfully perhaps) on his color one could justly argue that this was his reason that he could not return, but I feel it was a number of things that disallowed him to return to his Native roots. In reading a short biography I found he never returned to his homeland since he left it in 1912. I also found that his first novel (arguably) “Banana Plant” was written describing a women who had left her homeland in south Africa in search for higher education and on her return found it hard to hold true to her native roots and the society she grew up in while still holding adhering to the aesthetics of higher education she had learned (I guess the novel portrayed some kind of all encompassing metaphor or great comparison to what the women was going through). Here I feel we can see that McKay struggled with his alliance to his under-developed and uneducated roots and failed to reconcile the two together. Another argument could also be made that he felt it was his duty as a prominent poet to argue against racism and the incredulous idea that whites could front a civil movement that would accurately give the African Americans the equality they wanted if it was formed from (white) “statesmen roaming the world to set things right.” Knowing this you can truly sympathize with exactly how much of an “Outcast” he felt he was. While reading his poems I found that he had mixed emotions in general. In “If we must Die” and “America” the reader receives a portrait of a man who knows the civil struggle that his race is bonded into, but also a man who loves the country perhaps because of the sheer ability it has to change or promise something better in the future. These ideals, one would infer, are exactly opposite to the socialist and communist background that he held. I think we get the clearest picture of how he felt about tour politics and his standing as a major wheel in the civil rights movement from his poems “Look within” and “To the White Friends”. In “To the White Friends” we see a man who has seriously contemplated it seems a more radical “Black Panther” way of achieving civil rights, but is shown (as if by God) that his contributions will be much more helpful if he proves his worthiness perhaps through his prose. In “Look Within” we see a well presented argument of why the country is trying to solve everyone else’s problem when we ourselves have so many to contend with inside our walls. Knowing this I think we can contribute his socialistic and communist theories to instead stand for his way of saying that what we have is obviously not working we need to look in other directions. While I do not agree, and don’t feel either form of government would have been beneficial to the civil rights movement although they are both built on equality. I do understand that it would have been a very popular view for many people of his stature having to live with racism all around them.

Langston Hughes
I found the biggest contradiction between Mckay and writers of his thinking and Hughes was Hughes refusal to refer to his own life instances for inspiration in poetry. He chose instead to portray the black race as a whole in his writing. He also like McKay followed the communist and socialistic movement in America but was forced to renounce some of his affiliations and revise some of his collaborations of poetry during the “McCarthy reign of terror in the United States”. His Poems Like the “Weary Blues” and “Mulatto” Give us invaluable insight into the sufferings of Negros during the time of the Harlem Renaissance. One of my favorites is his short poem called “Justice”. I feel it most accurately describes America’s selective Justice that it stood for. A “Justice” that it fought wars in the name of. A “Justice” seemed to have no eyes instead merely a vehicle for government and politics to achieve what they wanted at the time. I also was more fond of his poem “The Negro speaks Rivers” because he chose to portray racial injustices against Negros from when they started (much earlier than anything that happened on American, although not any less unjust). He portrayed rightfully that Negros had been the back bone of forced labor since the beginning of time. My favorite of all is his poem “Let America be America Again”. I feel that this poem holds one of the strongest messages of any poem I have read today. Although I feel that his socialistic view were imparted in the poem, and that I don’t agree with I feel that it holds a view that everyone person should be aware of at this time in our country of big government. I love his reference throughout the poem to our forefathers and why this land was originally created. This reminds us of something that a lot of people have forgotten today, and should keep foremost in their mind when political decisions are being made.

James Weldon Johnson
Johnson’s poem “O Black and Unknown Bards” gives us a powerful feeling of appreciation for the slaves in the past who as he relates in his poem found some way to look toward heaven even after all that they had and were going through. After I read it a few times I found myself repeating the last line over and over in my head. To me it resounds the triumph through suffering that any individual being done injustice should receive if they are able to with hold such a great spirit through such a time of struggle. It reminded me mostly of the biblical story of Elijah which I feel might have been the point judging by Johnson’s other poems with so many biblical references. I also enjoyed “The Creation” because I felt that it gave us another insight to old slave folk lore. And not in the fictional kind but how they actually saw it from there eyes. His poem “The White Witch” I feel holds a large amount of duality. The white witch can be looked at as the white women who lured black men into sexual relations at the time and when found out caused the black man to be lynched. But it can also be seen as a metaphor for the United states at the time and all of their broken promises to the northern blacks. In this way it would have been mean as a warning to his black brothers from other countries that the juice is not as sweet as it’s acclaimed in America and although there is a front of civil rights and an equality movement there are just as many forces such as the Jim Crow Laws prohibiting true equality from occurring

Richard Wright
I have enjoyed Wrights work since I wrote an essay on his short story “ The Man who was Almost a Man”. His work always seems to me to offer a kind of duality that I love. It can be interpreted on many different levels, which in all is what makes good prose, but Wright seems to me to have mastered the ability to do it while using dialect and common language better than most. I also like that he was of the same opinion as Zora Hurston when it came to the portrayal of African Americans. He believed that his literature should spare no details that would have cause the White man to think less of or confirm their beliefs about the ignorance of African Americans. I feel this was very important because his attitude was one of no compromise he portrayed his race as it was with all the flaws that all races have instead of trying to make it be something that it was not in order to gain respect from a race that had been enslaving African Americans for centuries. I like his “you get what you see” attitude combined with “and it should be more than good enough for you.” In his short story “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow” he portrays the brutality of the truth that if his mother had not tried to teach him that Whites were in a different class, blacks were inferior, and not to attempt to mesh the two races he would have gotten himself killed. This simple truth shows just how the south worked during it’s period of Jim Crow laws. It was still as segregated and prejudiced as before the civil war.

Zora Neal Hurston “Sweat”
Staying true to her ideals Hurston’s story presents us with that African American vernacular that often embodies a good story. Instead of euphemizing the African American Race she tells a totally relatable story to all races. This is something I admire about her. She was unashamed of her race and knew that like every race it had it’s flaws. Perhaps unknowingly she portrayed a story that was totally relatable for many white women of her time thus propelling the civil rights movement through a sympathetic audience. A great story from end to end I especially enjoyed the language used and thought that was the main aspect that propelled the story to greatness while attaching it to it’s roots. It also has a connection to Johnson’s poetry by displaying that same unrelenting faith in God that brought her through all of her struggles. I thought that the purposeful irony between what Syke’s says about Delia’s religion and how she was a hypocrite was very powerful. Especially when we find out towards the end of the story that he still goes to church and takes communion in spite of what he is doing outside of church. The story also holds that “you reap what you sow” message for Mr. Syke which I feel was a popular belief in her time as well as today. You could also read Hurston’s story as speaking out against African American’s who were “enforcing” inferiority and racism through their self-centered acts (not as if to say that white people were committing the same actions as Mr. Syke’s was everyday). The overall message that I took from the story is the same “you reap what you sow” some time or another no matter what color, race, or nationality you have.