ENGL 282: Works – Synopsis – Flashcards

Classic African American tale about the undying belief of slaves that they would one day fly back to Africa and away from brutal oppression.

he story of a young jazz musician (Sonny) from Harlem, NY who gets addicted to heroin, is arrested for using and selling drugs, and returns to his childhood neighborhood after his release from prison. He moves in with his older brother (the story's narrator) and his brother's family. The two brothers sort of reconnect after a very tense few weeks during which both try to deal with their anger towards each other. Drugs are a central part of the story, but it's also about family, music, and trying to overcome life's struggles.

Invisible Man is the story of a young, college-educated black man struggling to survive and succeed in a racially divided society that refuses to see him as a human being. Told in the form of a first-person narrative, Invisible Man traces the nameless narrator's physical and psychological journey from blind ignorance to enlightened awareness — or, according to the author, "from Purpose to Passion to Perception" — through a series of flashbacks in the forms of dreams and memories. Set in the U.S. during the pre-Civil Rights era when segregation laws barred black Americans from enjoying the same basic human rights as their white counterparts, the novel opens in the South (Greenwood, South Carolina), although the majority of the action takes place in the North (Harlem, New York).

"How It Feels to Be Colored Me" is a widely anthologized descriptive essay in which Zora Neale Hurston explores the discovery of her identity and self-pride

The feeling of what being an African-American in America is like. In the first stanza Cullen describes what his home country means to him. The poem starts "What is Africa to me:" The following lines are describing what Africa means to him. Up to the fifth stanza Cullen describes what Africa means and what it is. From the fifth stanza until the end Cullen takes a turn. In the last section of the poem Cullen describes what is life is like in the world he is living in now.

Countee Cullen explored the meanings of life. He wanted to understand why things happened and how they happened. He wanted to analyze life and understand what it was about. Different views in life can only be seen once. Countee Cullen wanted to capture some of those feelings. He realized that some things could only be seen sometimes. He is feeling sorrowful about the things he has missed. He is feeling sorrowful about the things that his race will miss. He wants to change what is happening to his people, and he feels that it is unfair how they are being treated.

Although the first 12 lines of the poem address the universal theme of a good God that allows suffering in the world, the last two lines spin the poem's focus into marveling at how God could make "a poet black." Although stereotypes during the time minimized African Americans' ability to make worthwhile contributions to something as highbrow as art in America, this speaker finds a reason to marvel at his identity as both a poet and an African American.

In this poem Hughes renounces his former social and political activism and embraces the idea that people should just enjoy life and feel happy no matter what situation they're in.

The poem describes the musician, his music, and its meaning, developing the theme of the ameliorative effects of music.

The poem Afro American Fragment by Langston Hughes is an expression of longing for home, which is in the community of the blacks. The poet's forefathers were brought into America from their homeland, Africa, hundreds of years ago. Only history books and their songs remind him of their past. He can't speak even their language. He has to speak the un-Negro tongue, that is, English.

Mulatto highlights the less than desirable stereotypical qualities of African Americans of the time, such as uneducated speech. Elements like these often provoked harsh criticism of Hughes within the African American community.

The speaker claims that he, too, sings America. He is the "darker brother" who is sent to eat in the kitchen when there are guests visiting. However, he does laugh and he eats well and grows bigger and stronger. Tomorrow, he will sit at the table when the guests come, and no one will dare to tell him to eat in the kitchen. They will see his beauty and be ashamed, for, as he claims, "I, too, am America."

The poem begins with a speaker telling someone about a piano player he heard a couple nights ago. This musician was playing a slow blues song with all his body and soul. The speaker starts to really get into the sad music. Starting at line 19, we get the first verse to the song. This musician is singing about how, even though he's miserable, he's going to put his worries aside. The second verse is more of a bummer: nothing can cure his blues, and he wishes he was dead. The musician plays on late into the night; and when he finally goes to bed, he sleeps like a dead person or something else that can't think.

Our speaker introduces himself in the first line by telling us that he has known rivers and that his soul has come to be as deep as a river. Then he explains to us just how that transformation took place. He must be one ancient man, because he has been around for thousands of years. He used to go swimming the Euphrates River when Earth was just a baby. He lived near the Congo River in central Africa. He helped to build the pyramids in Egypt almost four thousand years ago. He heard the Mississippi River sing when President Abraham Lincoln took a boat ride down to New Orleans. He tells us again that he has known lots of ancient, dusky rivers, and that his soul has become as deep as these rivers.

It became the manifesto of the Harlem Renaissance. In it Hughes said that black artists in America should stop copying whites, that they will never create anything great that way. Instead they should be proud of who they are, proud to be black, and draw from black culture. Not "white is right" but, as we would now say, "Black is beautiful".

"Sympathy" is about a bird who is peeking outside his cage and sees a beautiful landscape with the sun shining bright. The author continues the poem by stating he knows the way the bird feels. The second stanza mentions the bird clanging his wings against the bars until it bleeds. The bird's "old, old scars" suggests that the bird has done this many times before, wanting terribly to get out. The author also wants to get out. The final stanza is about the bird singing, not of "joy or glee" but of prayer. The bird is asking God to let him leave his cage to enjoy the beauties of the outside world. Dunbar states he knows why the bird acts this way and even suggests that he does the same.

The speaker opens the poem with the declaration that we wear masks that hide our true feelings. He goes on to emphasize the severity of the pain and suffering that these masks try to cover up. By the end we understand that all of the politeness and subdued emotions are just phony disguises of the painful truths that hide behind them. And those masks certainly aren't doing anyone any favors.

The narrator, himself apparently a house servant, admonishes all to keep quiet as Malindy, probably a field slave, sings various songs of religious import. Miss Lucy, perhaps the plantation mistress, is told that her trained singing from a written score is no competition for Malindy's natural talent; indeed, the birds, though they sing sweetly, hush of their own accord when Malindy sings her superior melodies. Whenever Malindy sings, the narrator observes, it is a singular spiritual experience, one that should be taken advantage of every time

The preacher is talking about how God sent Moses to free the Hebrews from their 400 years of slavery in Egypt, although he is careful to remind people that he is just preaching about what's in the Bible and not talking about modern times, at least at first. But in the end, while he still warns not to go bragging about what he's said, the preacher concludes that one day the Lord will send them a Moses of their own to free them from their chains.

the overall meaning of this poem is about a man's love toward his wife or someone he adores. I also believe that poem isn't just about a man trying to gain affection from another, but trying to get her physically as well. In a sense, the poem is about teasing each other and telling each other how much they adore one another. It could be about a man trying to woo a woman he knows, or a husband telling his wife how much he loves her and what he loves about her.

Dunbar presents ideas of Ethiopia as a mother, shows a pride in the African-American people, and encourages hope as well as racial pride. His poem emphasizes a belief in a brighter future.

He is first concerned with the idea of Beauty, not as that which is in the eye of the beholder, but as that which is considered to be classical, universal, and transhistorical. Primarily, his question is "After all, who shall describe Beauty?" He suggests that African Americans are in a particularly good position to do this work because as he says, "pushed aside as we have been in America, there has come to us not only a certain distaste for the tawdry and flamboyant but a vision of what the world could be if it were really a beautiful world."

The Souls of Black Folk is the passionate and eloquent story of an individual, W. E. B. Du Bois, and a group, African Americans. Du Bois could not forget that his world was divided by a color line. Du Bois calls the experience generated by the color line the veil and allows his readers to walk with him within the veil. He does this with songs of sorrow that introduce each chapter.

"The Wife of His Youth" features an upwardly mobile, light-skinned mulatto man, a respected member of the Blue Veins Society in a Midwestern city. He is preparing to marry another light-skinned mulatto woman when a much darker woman comes to him seeking her husband, whom she has not seen in 25 years. The man turns out to be her husband.

starts with a conversation between Dick Owens and Charity Lomax. Charity tells Dick that if he did something she considered heroic, she could be convinced to fall in love with him and marry him. For this reason, Dick decides to help one of the slaves of his father's plantation to escape to the North. He chooses this particular way to impress Charity because she admires the courage of a man from Ohio, who tried to help another man's slave gain freedom but was unsuccessful and, as a consequence, was jailed. The man died of a disease shortly after being imprisoned.

Is a story within a story told by two different narrators. The first narrator is nameless vintner traveling south to Patesville (Fayetteville), North Carolina because of his wife's health condition. He purchases an old plantation that belonged to a slave-owner named Dugal McAdoo (master). Uncle Julius McAdoo, the second narrator, is a former slave that is going to tell the history of the conjured or cursed grapevine to convince them not to buy the plantation.

This autobiography begins with Booker's recollection of his birth in Franklin County, Virginia, in 1858 or 1859 and follows his progress through his education, his establishment of the Tuskegee Institute, and his fame as a speaker who presents the importance of good race relations to as many audiences of both races as he can reach.

Argument that without the opportunity of education, the oppressed will never be able to rise above their position as inferiors to be equal to their oppressors. At the same time, since they are denied education, they have become a self-fulfilling prophecy: They are told that they are inferior, are not given the opportunity to elevate their minds through education, and therefore act within the confines of the boundaries that society sets for them because they do not have the knowledge to break these boundaries down.

Living with the dual burdens of racism and sexism, slave women in the plantation South assumed roles within the family and community that contrasted sharply with traditional female roles in the larger American society. This new edition of Ar'n't I a Woman? reviews and updates the scholarship on slave women and the slave family, exploring new ways of understanding the intersection of race and gender and comparing the myths that stereotyped female slaves with the realities of their lives. Above all, this groundbreaking study shows us how black women experienced freedom in the Reconstruction South — their heroic struggle to gain their rights, hold their families together, resist economic and sexual oppression, and maintain their sense of womanhood against all odds.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl opens with an introduction in which the author, Harriet Jacobs, states her reasons for writing an autobiography. Her story is painful, and she would rather have kept it private, but she feels that making it public may help the antislavery movement. A preface by abolitionist Lydia Maria Child makes a similar case for the book and states that the events it records are true.

Frederick Douglass was born into slavery sometime in 1817 or 1818. Like many slaves, he is unsure of his exact date of birth. Douglass is separated from his mother, Harriet Bailey, soon after he is born. His father is most likely their white master, Captain Anthony. Captain Anthony is the clerk of a rich man named Colonel Lloyd. Lloyd owns hundreds of slaves, who call his large, central plantation the "Great House Farm." Life on any of Lloyd's plantations, like that on many Southern plantations, is brutal. Slaves are overworked and exhausted, receive little food, few articles of clothing, and no beds. Those who break rules—and even those who do not—are beaten or whipped, and sometimes even shot by the plantation overseers, the cruelest of which are Mr. Severe and Mr. Austin Gore.

The poem was sent to George Washington, the newly appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of North America, in October of 1775, well before American Independence was declared in 1776. Washington, as busy as he was with organizing the colonies to take on the British, sent a letter back to Wheatley thanking her for the poem and inviting her to visit him if she ever came to Cambridge, Massachusetts. The poem anticipates the future for the new republic, and praises the efforts of its military leader and first president.

She encourages Moorhead to make the most of his gifts and to enjoy any fame that comes to him, but at the same time she fixes her thoughts on the afterlife, suggesting that what the earth offers as glory is paltry by comparison to Heaven's glory. In paradise, where they will both be free, their celestial gifts will be nobler and purer, and they will no longer write about or paint "Damon" or "Aurora," subjects that are worldly as well as being products of Western culture rather than the artists' African culture.

The speaker is a slave that was brought from Africa to America—by "mercy." And it's mercy that converts the speaker to Christianity, which she knew nothing about in Africa. Although people view her race negatively, the poem reflects her belief that anyone, even "Negroes," can be saved by joining Christianity.

She testifies to the power and glory of the merciful God who brought her safely from a dark place; it is possible that she is referring to Africa, but she may well be referring to the dark slave ship that transported her to America where, though well treated, she is still enslaved. Again she draws attention to her race and servitude by reminding the students that an "Ethiop" (African) is warning them that sin leads to ruin and damnation. By implication, she seems to be leading them to the conclusion that enslaving fellow humans is one such deadly sin.

Slave narrative in which the entire story consists of Equiano growing up in Africa, capture, and his enslavement. Equiano brings us to a time when slavery historical had not reached its full height but was socially acceptable. The use of Africans for chattel slavery had created an entirely new kind of economy for the English and Africans themselves.

Brer Fox first threatens to "bobbycue" Brer Rabbit, then to hang him, then to drown him. Each time, Brer Rabbit says fine, do anything you want, but please do not throw me in the briar patch. After Brer Rabbit says he would even prefer having his eye gouged out, his ears torn, and his legs cut off than to be thrown into the briar patch, the stupid fox, who "wanter hurt Brer Rabbit ez bad ez he kin," flings Brer Rabbit into the briar patch. A few minutes later, Brer Fox hears someone calling him. Looking up to the top of a hill, he sees Brer Rabbit seated on a log and combing the tar out of his fur. Brer Fox realizes he has been had, and Brer Rabbit cannot help but taunt him, hollering out, "'Bred en bawn in a brier-patch, Brer Fox—bred en bawn in a brier-patch!' en wid dat he skip out des ez lively ez a cricket in de embers."

Br'er Fox constructs a doll out of a lump of tar and dresses it with some clothes. When Br'er Rabbit comes along he addresses the tar "baby" amiably, but receives no response. Br'er Rabbit becomes offended by what he perceives as the Tar-Baby's lack of manners, punches it, and in doing so becomes stuck. The more Br'er Rabbit punches and kicks the tar "baby" out of rage, the worse he gets stuck. Br'er Rabbit is stuck, Br'er Fox ponders how to dispose of him. The helpless but cunning Br'er Rabbit pleads, "but please, Br'er Fox, don't fling me in dat brier-patch," prompting Fox to do exactly that. As rabbits are at home in thickets, the resourceful Br'er Rabbit escapes.

Sneaking away from work, Brer Rabbit gets stuck in a well. Tells Brer Fox that he needs help hauling up fish. Fox falls down well, hauling up Rabbit. Brer Rabbit tells all that Fox is muddying the drinking water.

A trickster slave proves to defy stereotypical inferiority when he repeatedly beats his master at bets to make money. Ultimately, he tricks his master into drowning himself.

A turtle tells a slave that African-Americans talk too much. When the slave tells his master that there is a talking turtle, he is beaten half to death because the turtle would not speak up to the master. The turtle then reiterates his point to the slave.

African-American man is denied his entrance into heaven because "God wasn't home or having any visitors--by which he meant no negroes allowed."When St. Peter leaves his post the man steals himself a pair of wings and flies around heaven until brought down by the "heavenly police force." He tells his friend, "while I was there I was a flying fool," (66-7).