Let's Get Literary
In A Raisin in the Sun, Bennie’s hair represents her search for identity and her African heritage. Bennie'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?
This poet, journalist, and translator wrote the poem that A Raisin in the Sun gets its name from.
Who is Langston Hughes?
During the 1920s, US cities —especially NYC— saw this cultural boom in Black artistic, literary, intellectual, and political production.
What is the Harlem Renaissance?
This term was popularized by Alain Locke through his 1925 anthology of the same name.
What is the New Negro?
When Phillis Wheatley writes that “Mercy brought me from my native land,” she uses this literary device.
What is personification?
“I think,” she said at last, “that being a mother is the cruelest thing in the world.”
Who is Clare Kendry (Bellew)?
In a letter to The Ladder magazine, this playwright and activist identified herself as a “heterosexually married lesbian.”
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 genre involves a written or oral account of the life of a person who was enslaved, often by an African American.
What is a slave narrative.
Margaret Walker uses this literary device in "For My People" when she writes, “...planting pruning patching.” Claude McKay also uses this device in "America" when he writes, “bread of bitterness.”
What is alliteration?
“Lord! How I hate sick people, and their stupid, meddling, families, and smelly, dirty rooms, and climbing filthy steps in dark hallways.”
Who is Brian Redfield?
This 19th-century African American author and activist wrote Iola Leroy, Or Shadows Uplifted, a novel about a mixed-race woman navigating the challenges of slavery and racial identity pre- and post-Civil War.
Who is Frances Ellen Watkins Harper? (Frances Harper)
During this post-Civil War period, the Southern states were re-integrated into the Union, and policies were implemented to address the economic, social, and political challenges faced by African Americans.
What is the Reconstruction Era? (Reconstruction)
In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. 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?
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?
“If you teach that n— how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave.”
Who is Mr. Auld?
This Afro-Puerto Rican Harlem Renaissance historian and bibliophile argued that “The American Negro must remake his past in order to make his future.”
Who is Arthur Schomburg? (Arturo Schomburg)
These year ranges demarcate the two waves of the Great Migration.
What are 1910-1940 and 1940-1970?
Named after a minstrel character, these laws institutionalized racial segregation in public facilities, schools, and transportation, and were in effect from the 1870s until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
What are Jim Crow laws?
In “Of the Coming of John,” W.E.B. Du Bois uses one John to contrast and highlight the other John. Du Bois uses this literary device, which refers to a character that highlights the traits of a protagonist by contrasting them.
What is a foil/dramatic foil?
“I heard a lady say that there were two things the Lord didn't make. One is sin, and the other alcohol.”
Who is Iola Leroy?
This author’s satirical short stories feature a character named Uncle Julius who critiques the romanticization of the antebellum South.
Who is Charles Chesnutt?
Du Bois described the problem of the color line as the problem of this century.
What is the Twentieth Century?
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?