African-American Literature

The Harlem Renaissance

Harlem Renaissance

5 million African-Americans migrated North WWI & After

New York Harlem

Poets, painters, musicians, dancers, etc.

Langston Hughes (1902-1967) Moved to New York at

19 First African-American

to support himself as writer

Poet, journalist, novelist, musician

Poems capture musical qualities of African oral tradition Fuse everyday speech

with rhythms of jazz and blues

The Negro Speaks of Riversby Langston Hughes

I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Justice by Langston Hughes

  That Justice is a blind goddessIs a thing to which we black are wise:

Her bandage hides two festering sores

That once perhaps were eyes.

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917 – 2000)

Chicago born First African-

American Pulitzer Prize winning poet

Poems paint picture of black ghettos Drew from jazz and

street slang

We Real Coolby Gwendolyn Books

We real cool. WeLeft school. We

Lurk late. WeStrike straight. We

Sing sin. WeThin gin. We

Jazz June. WeDie soon.

Countee Cullen

Began writing at age 14.

Attended New York University; Masters from Harvard.

Popular with white poetry, sometimes shunned in black community because of this.

Lyric poet in tradition of Keats and Shelley

Locked arm in arm they cross the way,    The black boy and the white, The golden splendor of the day,

   The sable pride of night.

From lowered blinds the dark folk stare,    And here the fair folk talk,

Indignant that these two should dare    In unison to walk.

Oblivious to look and work    They pass, and see no wonder That lightning brilliant as a sword

   Should blaze the path of thunder.

TABLEAU by Countee Cullen

TO JOHN KEATS, POET, AT SPRING TIME(For Carl Van Vechten)

I cannot hold my peace, John Keats; There never was a spring like this;

It is an echo, that repeats My last year's song and next year's bliss.

I know, in spite of all men say Of Beauty, you have felt her most. Yea, even in your grave her way

Is laid. Poor, troubled, lyric ghost, Spring never was so fair and dear

As Beauty makes her seem this year.

I cannot hold my peace, John Keats, I am as helpless in the toil

Of Spring as any lamb that bleats To feel the solid earth recoil

Beneath his puny legs. Spring beats her tocsin call to those who love her,

And lo! the dogwood petals cover Her breast with drifts of snow, and sleek

White gulls fly screaming to her, and hover About her shoulders, and kiss her cheek,

While white and purple lilacs muster A strength that bears them to a cluster

Of color and odor; for her sake All things that slept are now awake.

And you and I, shall we lie still, John Keats, while Beauty summons us?

Somehow I feel your sensitive will Is pulsing up some tremulous

Sap road of a maple tree, whose leaves Grow music as they grow, since your

Wild voice is in them, a harp that grieves For life that opens death's dark door.

Though dust, your fingers still can push The Vision Splendid to a birth,

Though now they work as grass in the hush Of the night on the broad sweet page of the earth.

"John Keats is dead," they say, but I Who hear your full insistent cry

In bud and blossom, leaf and tree, Know John Keats still writes poetry.

And while my head is earthward bowed To read new life sprung from your shroud,

Folks seeing me must think it strange That merely spring should so derange My mind. They do not know that you, John Keats, keep revel with me, too.

James Baldwin Born 1924 in Harlem Compared his stern

stepfather to Ishmael in Genesis First, albeit illegitimate son

of Abraham Forced to wander in the

wilderness after legitimate Isaac was born

Ishmael theme apparent in literature

Fled the segregated north for France

Wrote much about black struggles in America

Listen

Lil Hardin Armstrong

Charlie Parker

As you listen to Armstrong, write down some adjectives that describe the music.

As you listen to Parker, write down differences you hear from Armstrong

“Sonny’s Blues”

From whose point of view is “Sonny’s Blues” told? How do the narrator’s values and

experiences affect his view of the story?What does the older brother’s

profession suggest about his personality

How would this story change if it was told by the younger brother?