Black Culture Essay

During the Harlem Renaissance, writers, especially dumb ones, portrayed the grislyen cultivation and style in their writing. They used scorch assumptions, generalizations and stereotypes to show, what they thought was, the dour culture. Not all of this was far from the truth. Three writers, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and superior Brown are examples of writers that emulated non- snowy culture in their full treatment. Langston Hughes works, The Negro Speaks of Rivers, fixate big bucks to Son, When Sue Wears Red, The Weary Blues, I, Too, and Harlem are examples of the portrayal of b deficiency culture by means of writing.In The Negro Speaks of Rivers, Hughes focuses on important accomplishments and places where Negroes were heavily populated. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. / I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. /I ensureed upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. / I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Linc oln/ went down to New Orleans, and Ive seen its muddy/ bosom turn all gold in the sunset (Hughes 1291). In Mother to Son, he gets advice of a arrive given to her son.She tells him how her life was no crystal stair and how she had to struggle to get where she is and that she is still struggling to get even further. She describes her trials and tribulations as tacks/and splinters/ and boards divide up/ and places with no carpet on the floor/ bare. (Hughes 1292). She tells her son never to give up on his dreams and to declare climbing that crystal stair. This is because the find knows how hard it is to get ahead in the world when youre sear and that everything that calamitouss have they have worked hard to get. When Sue Wears Red describes the beauty of the black woman.He compares Susannas face o an ancient cameo/ turned dark-brown by the ages. He also compares to a queens form near time-dead Egyptian night (Hughes 1293). The Weary Blues portrays the musical side of the bl ack culture, describing a man playing that sad raggy tune bid a musical fool and singing in a deep vociferation voice with a melancholy tone The music that comes from a black mans soul (Hughes 1294). I, Too show the degrading agency in which black people were treated. The black house workers were treated as if they were inferior or not fit to be around black-and-blue people.This is shown when the worker tells us, they send me to eat in the kitchen/ when company comes. Due to the spirited hopes and determination of black people, this does not discourage the speaker. He knows that, one day, hell be at the table/ when company comes. / Nobodyll dare/ ordain to me/ eat in the kitchen/theyll see how beautiful I am/ and be ashamed (Hughes 1295). He believes that one day black people willing be accepted and will be able to eat with the whites. This position is what kept blacks striving to succeed.Harlem questions what may happen if black people do off their dreams and progression. This delay may be willing or by force but either way the dreams may dry up/ worry a raisin in the sun or stink like rotten meat or even worse explode (Hughes 1309). halt black people from fulfilling their dreams would at worst cause a mutiny. This rebellion may not be nonviolent. Sterling Brown uses poems much(prenominal) as Odyssey of Big Boy, Southern Road, Slim Greer, and Ma Rainey to describe black culture in his eyes. Brown wrote mostly of the working class black population.He wrote his poems as though it were a work song that they used to keep time. Thus, you see a lot of repetition in his works. This is seen in some(prenominal) Odyssey of Big Boy and Southern Road. In Odyssey of Big Boy, Brown gives masses to some of the folklore heroes of the black culture, such as Casey Jones and Stagolee (Brown 1248). This not only shows the heroes delineated in black culture but also their use of stories ancient down through the generations to keep the culture alive. He goes on to describe the manual labor that black people have done everyplace the ages.This includes how they skinned as a boy in Kentucky hills/druv steel at that place as a man/striped tobacco in Virginia fiels/mined de coal in West Virginia etc (Brown 1249). These are prime examples of the jobs that the lack culture held whether it is when they were slaves or after they were freed. It was characteristic of them to hold jobs that involved a great deal of manual labor. Southern Road depicts some of the struggles that a typical black man may have dealt with during those times. He speaks around working in a chain gang, a father dying, pass to jail and white men degrading the black man.Slim Greer is or so a black man that passed as white. He met a white woman who thought he as from Spain/ or else from France (Brown 1256). It was not until he played some monful blues that they found out that he was indeed black (Brown 1257). This depicts the musicality of the black culture. Music was one of the some ways they used to express themselves, so, for the most part, they had a great genius in it. Ma Rainey is also a poem about the musicality of the black culture. Whenever Ma Rainey came to town folks from anyplace/ miles aroun/flocks to hear/ Ma do her stuff (Brown 1258).Black people enjoyed gathering around to see to music. This was probably because not only was it entertaining but it also told a story. Zora Neale Hurston depicts black culture through her works entitled confinement, How IT Feels To Be saturnine Me, and Their Eyes Were ceremonial God. Hurston wrote a great deal about the togetherness in the black confederacy. Many of her stories, including these three works, took place in an exclusively black town and included at least one seen where the entire community sat outside together talking, usually gossiping, and watching passersby.In Sweat they gossip about Delia Jones, mainly they talk about how her husband, Sykes, beats and abuses her and how he is hav ing an affair with a woman named Bertha. They badmouth Sykes, saying how horrible and stupid he is for cheating on a god woman like Delia, especially with such a fat woman. This also shows how it was common in the black culture, especially in the south, for men to like thicker women. Their Eyes Were Watching God also has a few scenes in which we see the black community together. In the beginning, Janie is seen by the whole community walking backrest in overalls.They immediately begin to talk about her. They make assumptions, such as Tea Cake stole all of her money and toss away her. They talk about how silly she was for taking off with a younger man in the first place and whatever happened to her probably serves her right. In conclusion, the black culture is evident in many works by various black writers. They show the good and the bad, the truth and its exaggerations. Reading works written in the time gives us a good look into what the black society was actually like back then.