Let's Get Literary
In A Raisin in the Sun, Beneatha's hair represents her search for identity and her African heritage. Beneatha's hair is an example of this literary device.
What is symbolism?
“Man, I'm a volcano. Bitter? Here I am a giant – surrounded by ants! Ants who can't even understand what it is the giant is talking about.”
Who is Walter Lee Younger (or Walter Younger)?
This writer and journalist penned the poem, “I, Too,” which affirms Black identity and belonging in the United States.
Who is Langston Hughes?
During the 1920s, US cities (especially in the North and West) saw this cultural boom in Black artistic, literary, intellectual, and political production.
What is the Harlem Renaissance?
In The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois uses this term to describe the experience of Black Americans struggling to reconcile their identity as both Black and American.
What is double consciousness?
When Phillis Wheatley writes that “Mercy brought me from my native land,” she uses this literary device.
What is personification?
“You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.”
Who is Frederick Douglass?
Born and raised on Chicago’s South Side, this playwright became the first Black woman to have a play produced on Broadway with A Raisin in the Sun.
Who is Lorraine Hansberry?
This was the mass movement of about six million African Americans from the US South to northern, midwestern, and western cities during the 20th century.
What is The Great Migration?
This term describes a society in which racial categories are imagined to no longer matter or exist (glimpsed briefly in The Comet by W. E. B. Du Bois).
What is the post-racial (or “post-race”)?
Margaret Walker uses this literary device in "For My People" when she writes, “...planting pruning patching,” and Claude McKay uses it in "America" with the phrase “bread of bitterness.”
What is alliteration?
“Can't you realize that I'm not like you a bit? Why, to get the things I want badly enough, I'd do anything, hurt anybody, throw anything away.”
Who is Clare Kendry (or Clare Bellew)?
This writer examines the tensions of racial passing through the complex and volatile friendship between Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry in Passing.
Who is Nella Larsen?
During this post-Civil War period, the Southern states were re-integrated into the Union, and policies were implemented to address the various challenges faced by African Americans.
What is the Reconstruction Era (or Reconstruction)?
This standardized genre involves a written or oral account of the life of a formerly enslaved person, often an African American.
What is a slave narrative?
The poem “Harlem” suggests that a deferred dream might “stink like rotten meat” or “fester like a sore,” using figurative comparisons that rely on this literary device.
What is a simile?
“Death, the leveler!” and “Yes—I was not—human, yesterday.”
Who is Jim (from The Comet)?
This writer gained popularity for his dialect poems, but also authored more serious poetry, like “The Haunted Oak.”
Who is Paul Laurence Dunbar?
These year ranges demarcate the two waves of the Great Migration.
What are 1910-1940 and 1940-1970?
This term refers to the forced journey of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the New World (the Americas). It is one leg of the triangular trade route.
What is the Middle Passage?
In Frederick Douglass's Narrative, he writes, “He was just the man for such a place, and it was just the place for such a man.” Douglass frequently uses this literary device, which entails repeating grammatical constructions or phrases in reverse order.
What is chiasmus?
“It was an accident, a terrible accident. ”
Who is Irene Redfield?
This 18th-century poet, brought from west Africa and enslaved in Boston is known as the “mother of African American poetry.”
Who is Phillis Wheatley?
Du Bois described the problem of the color line as the problem of this century.
What is the Twentieth Century (or Twentieth)?
W.E.B. Du Bois uses this metaphor to describe the barrier that he believes prevents true understanding and equality between Black and white people.
What is the veil?