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?
In a letter to The Ladder magazine, this playwright and activist identified herself as a “heterosexually married lesbian.”
Who is Lorraine Hansberry?
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?
“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 (Bellew)?
This 19th-century African American author and activist wrote A Voice From the South, a nonfiction work exploring issues of race, culture, and women’s rights to education.
Who is Anna Julia Cooper? (will also accept Anna Cooper or Julia Cooper)
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?
“Those beautiful vessels, robed in purest white, so delightful to the eye of freemen, were to me so many shrouded ghosts, to terrify and torment me with thoughts of my wretched condition.”
Who is Frederick Douglass?
In “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” (1926), this writer and journalist argues that Black artists should embrace and express their racial identity in their work.
Who is Langston Hughes?
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? (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?
“And you needn't think I'm going to let you change him to some nice kindergarten kind of a school because he's getting a little necessary education. [...] The sooner and the more he learns about sex, the better for him.”
Who is Brian Redfield?
This African American woman writer requests in her poem that she be buried in a free land.
Who is Frances Ellen Watkins Harper? (Will also accept "Frances Harper")
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 “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?
“Death, the leveler!” and “Yes—I was not—human, yesterday.”
Who is Jim (from The Comet)?
This writer, journalist, and contrarian argued in his essay “The Negro-Art Hokum” (1926) that “the Aframerican is merely a lampblacked Anglo-Saxon.”
Who is George Schuyler?
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?