Colonial Literature	Civil War & Realism	Modernism
European Romanticim	Whitman	Harlem Renaissance
American Romanticism	19th century Naturalism	Beat Generation/Whitman
New England Renaissance	American Realism & Regionalism	Feminism
Dickinson	Anxiety of Influence	Home

Harlem Renaissance

Authors and works that we will cover this spring:

• Langston Hughes: "The Negro Speaks," and "Theme for English B."
• Jean Toomer: "Reapers" (not in our anthology).
• Countee Cullen: "Incident."
• Helene Johnson: "Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem."
• Sterling A. Brown: "Ma Rainey."

Historical Contexts in American Literature

Paul Dunbar

We Wear the Mask

We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes&emdash;

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,

And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while

We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise.

We sing, but oh the clay is vile

Beneath our feet, and long the mile;

But let the world dream otherwise,

We wear the mask!

                    Paul Laurence Dunbar

See Dunbar home page and home! http://www.ohiohistory.org/places/dunbar/

Art Links:

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/nationalities/African-American.html

Sargent Johnson, 1887 - 1967. Sargent Johnson studied at The School of The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and at the California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco. He learned lithography while working in the Bay area WPA/FAP program. Best known as a sculptor and ceramist, he was employed as a senior sculptor and later as a unit supervisor, the only African-American to achieve this position.Lennox Avenue, c. 1935; lithograph; 12 1/2 x 8 5/8 inches; 313:1943. Gift of Federal Works Agency, Work Projects Administration

Other links:

http://www.slam.org/images/spex/BLKHIST/johnson.html

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/evans_minnie.html

Send me links for the following topics:

Afro-American Literature/Studies

Zora Neale Hurston

Toni Morrison

Alice Walker

Henry Louis Gates

Cornel West