Stacy's Harlem Renaissance

Stacy Halida

Literary Content Blog

Harlem Renaissance

            The Harlem Renaissance was major part of history, especially for the African American population. The Harlem Renaissance was a flourishing period of artistic and literary creation in African American culture. It all began with the increased militancy and racial pride symbolized by the 1919 parade of black veterans through Harlem and ended with the Great Depression. (encyclopedia)

            It was also a movement encompassing literature, art, and performing arts in the 1920s and 1930s centered in Harlem, New York. Many writers and artists were determined to expose a new light to many unrecognized black culture Harlem provided them with many opportunities to do so. (encyclopedia) (Jervis Anderson)

            The readings that we had it class had a lot to do with colored people, so the Harlem Renaissance was very prominent for these authors. Claude Mckay was talking about what he thought of America, and Langston Hughes also wrote about what he thought of America, and he had hope. This is what the Harlem Renaissance was all about, so it seemed.

            Langston Hughes poem, I, Too can have many interpretations but the line “they’ll see how beautiful I am, and be ashamed, I, too am America.” I think this means that one day everyone will be equal and when that day comes everyone who thought blacks will not be equal to whites will be ashamed for what they said. This also reminds me of the Harlem Renaissance because it was the time of prosperity and growth for the African American culture and population.

Works Cited

encyclopedia, Benets readers. "Harlem Renaissance." (n.d.): 2.

Jervis Anderson, A. Houston Baker, Irvin Huggins, Gloria T. Hull, David Lewis. "Harlem Renaissance." (n.d.).

 

Stacy Halida Blog 3

Stacy Halida

Blog 3

            The story To Build a Fire was very interesting to me. This story was one of my favorite pieces we have read this semester. I mostly like this one best because it has something to do with the outdoors. It is about a man who is going to meet some people by a certain time, but has many pitfalls on his way to do so. He just cannot win in any situation he is put in.

            There are many different aspects in the story To Build a Fire like human ignorance, humans don’t respect nature, lack of fear or nature, and many more. Human ignorance seems to be the most distinguishing choice. There is a lot of human ignorance on the man’s part. The man who is unnamed seems to not realize how much danger he is truly in. Common sense says “Don’t go out in the wilderness and cold alone.” But what does this man do… he goes into the wilderness/cold all by himself and guess what happens, nothing good at all. This is so much human ignorance because he really doesn’t understand how in danger his life is in. And, because of his ignorance he ends up dying at the end of the story.

            This story has taught me a very valuable lesson, one that I actually knew before but showed me how bad human ignorance can really be and where it can lead you. Lessons come at a price and I’ve had my fair share, but this lesson came with a very hard price. The best advice this story can offer to its readers is don’t be so ignorant and pay attention to all of your surroundings.

Stacy's Race and American Novel Project PArt 1

Personal Synthesis

            One theme in UTC that really stood out to me was the power of women. Many see this book as very early feminism and I would have to agree. This novel was written before the women’s rights movement. I saw many times in the novel, though it may not be very prominent, how women have a lot of power especially over their husbands.

            Many of the women in the novel are very nice and sweet, who try to get their husband’s to be too harsh to their slaves. They try to work through the background so their husband’s don’t know that their wives are trying to have things a certain way. Some examples of these women are, Mrs. Bird who tries to help out many slaves, and St. Clare’s mother, and there are many more also.

            This book shows also African American women in a very positive way. Eliza is the prime example of pure, strong, capable, and brave African American women. Eliza is also very protective over her son and will do anything to keep him safe, even if that means running away with him, which that also shows her great bravery.

            This is one of the stronger themes that I saw throughout the entire book. A lot of the women portrayed in the book had great power over their husbands. Even sometimes when the husbands didn’t really realize it. When they did, they just pushed their wives off to the side and said that they didn’t want their opinion.

Stacy's Race and the American Novel Project Part 1

Critical Commentary

            On page 539 of UTC Jane P. Tompkins opens her article by telling us a story about a particular time in her life. Then she goes into describing women writers and how important they were to literature. It is now respectful to read the works of these writers because of how they are in history. Some of the women are Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin. Her main purpose for writing this article is the male-dominated scholarly tradition that controls both the canon of American Literature and the critical perspective that interprets the canon for society. During this time sentimental novels written by women were responsible for cultural evils. People could even argue saying that UTC is a conservative book. They may say this because it goes back to an older way of life. So she is basically saying that women writers were blamed for the many wrong things in society.

            I agree with all of the things she is saying because maybe that’s how people saw women in the 19^th century, but I feel women need to be given more credit for their works. I really like how the opening statements of this article is a story about a time in her life, so it gives me more background about her and what she is going to write about. I do believe it is respectful to read the works of women writers because they took the time to write it. I also think that the book UTC could be considered conservative because it was from an older time and slavery was around, so that makes sense to me.

            I agree with Tompkins interpretation because her article does sort of help me understand UTC a little better. Although women don’t play a big part in UTC, they are in it. Mostly the men take care of anything slavery related and the women very rarely give their husbands their opinion.

Stacy's Race and American Novel Project Part 1

Textual Background and Context

               This image is advertising the sale of slaves, preferably the Great Sale of Slaves. It is says the age categories for each slave for example, 3 Bucks aged from 20-26, strong and able-bodied. The poster also shows how well the slaves will be able to work, by saying how strong and how able they are to work. There are five different categories such as: 3 Bucks, 1 Wench, 1 Wench, One Buck, and 17 Bucks. Even though some are the same categories, it differs in their age and their ability to work, some are men and some are women. One woman even has a 6 month old baby for sale with her. The poster also states that only cash can be used to buy the slaves. It lastly shows who is in charge of the Great Sale of Slaves, which in this case is John Carter.

               This poster really catches me off guard. I don’t think slavery is right to begin with so seeing this poster is just very strange to me. I also don’t think its right for the slaves to have names such as Bucks and Wenches. This poster may have gotten a lot of attention back then for the purchase of slaves, but that doesn’t mean its ethical at all. Slavery shouldn’t have happened at all so the purpose of this poster doesn’t really work for me at all.

               This image adds more understanding to Uncle Tom’s Cabin because that whole book was basically about slavery. We saw multiple times in UTC how slaves were being purchased. So this poster announcing the Great Sale of Slaves fits right into the book and gives us an image of what those posters must have looked like.

Blog # 2 Emily Dickinson

Stacy Halida

Blog #2

            Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson was born in 1830. She was a very famous poet of her time, probably one of the most famous poets. She lived with her parents most of her life except when she was away at boarding school for less than a year. So, she did get a very little bit of a formal education. She was very solitary most of her life because she shut herself up in her room a lot. Only 12 of her poems were published during her lifetime; she wrote many more than that.

            Dickinson’s poem titled #236 or “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church” has many symbols. A few of the symbols are the bobolink which is a bird and a chorister which is a person singing in a choir. I think that she wrote this poem because she wanted to know what church means to herself and what church means to people of the 19^th century. I also think that she feels that she doesn’t have to go to church because she acts “godly” all of the time. We discussed some of these ideas in class and it helped me see how she was writing this poem more clearly.

            The poem by Dickinson titled #764 or “My life has stood a loaded gun” was the most difficult poem to get a grasp on. I thought this because it could be interpreted in many different ways, and in some parts it was very difficult to understand what she was talking about. From our class discussion it helped a little because some points were cleared up. I feel that there was definitely a masculine character especially in the last stanza. And, in the 3^rd stanza there was happiness and then destruction.

            I feel that Dickinson’s work is overall very interesting. Emily Dickinson leaves a lot of room for many different interpretations of her works. I think that is very neat that someone can write a poem and people have so many of their own ideas of what the poem could be about. I believe that people are right when they say that Emily Dickinson on recognized as one of the world’s greatest American poets.