ID #1. Highlight of a poem
presented in class before midterm

Assignment

Sample Answers:

In the poem on page 111 of the Unsettling America Anthology, “Song No. 3” by Sonia Sanchez, the author addresses the physical differences in African American girls that separate them from the dominant culture.  In focusing on the physical characteristics, the author directly relates to class objective 5a.  She forces the reader to share in the minority experience by pointing out how she and other minorities are different from the dominant culture.  Not only does she see herself as different from others, but she sees herself as ugly.  However, her tone changes at the end of the poem during the last two lines.  She hopes that one day others will see her as a “pretty little black girl.”

            Thematically, the poem stands out in relation to course objective 3 in its reference to Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.  She states, “but, one day i hope….”  This reference to “one day” is her hope for the future.  It is her American Dream.  It is these few words and their reference to Dr. King’s speech that have the greatest impact.  Without focusing on this small phrase, one can dismiss the poem as a young girl’s insecurities with her physical appearance.  However, the phrase draws the reader’s attention to the fact that this is not her feelings for this particular time in her life, nor are they isolated from the feelings of other minorities; they are a reminder that the physical differences between the minority culture and the dominant culture are constant.  The physical differences will not change and so she hopes that a day will come when she is not separated from the dominant culture due to her physical appearance. [KM]

ID #1

“It is an undefiled seat

Adjacent to the door

Opening at the same Loop stall

Outside the deco-art marble plantation

In which we all

Are hourly enslaved.”

This is the last stanza of Michael Warr’s “Brain on Ice: The El Train Poem,” on page 86 of Unsettling America. In this last stanza Warr ties the poem together, reiterating how no one will sit on the perfectly good seat next to him. In the last two lines he points out how all the occupants on the train have a common ground, whether they like it or not. Objective 4 first comes to mind in reading this. There was the idea of a struggle for assimilation throughout the poem that manifests itself at the end in the “deco-art marble plantation.” Deco-art cannot be assimilated with the idea of a plantation. The two ideas do not merge together at all, but rather clash, as one is a symbol of modernity and the other old history. Really though deco-art marble plantation is what contemporary America is: a conglomeration of the old with the new. Deco-art and a plantation both have a commonality in that the two are American-made. The poet has tried to assimilate and join the dominant culture; he dresses like any white-collar educated man typically would. His attire follows in accordance with what most believe to be the stereotypical white businessman. Yet he cannot assimilate, because of “the ideology of American racialism,” as explained in Objective 4b. A “deco-art marble plantation” is true American practice—it is a mix, or an adaptation. The dominant culture though views it as something of an ugly clash because they believe in the “American racial ideology,” which is a belief system that races are pure and permanently separate. If there is a mix it is to be condemned. No one is wiling to sit on the perfectly good seat next to a perfectly decent looking man because of the color of the man’s skin. This falls under Objective 1d as well. He is dark skinned, so it is assumed that he is evil and threatening.

            This last stanza really works for the poem in bringing it together. Objective 5e is about” how all speakers and writers may use common devises of human language to make poetry.” In Robert Lawing’s presentation of the poem he identified how Warr uses allusions in the poem. “Deco-art marble plantation places two allusions together. The phrase could also be placed under the term imagery, since it evokes the sense of sight.  Objective 5e highlights how minority literature, in this case poetry, is common in a way to all poetry. By coincidence the poem is actually about realizing commonality. After all the negativity throughout the poem—the poet being frustrated that the white people stereotype him—there is a sense of optimism in that all the occupants are really the same and not so different as they think they are. Or maybe it is not optimism since only the poet recognizes it. Nevertheless, there is a common ground between the train riders.  There is no one pure race, and if even one person recognizes that, then there is hope. [NC]

ID #1:  “Ka ’Ba” by Amiri Baraka, UA 155-156. 

            In the first three stanzas of Ka ’Ba, Amiri Baraka paints a picture of African-American life and experience.  Kathy Martin noted that the first stanza “appears to set the poem within an apartment complex or inner city.”  The first stanza describes a “closed window look[ing] down on a dirty courtyard.”   The illustration evokes the noise and activity of African-American life.  One immediately notices the absence of “white America” in this scenario.  In contrast, “Election Time,” by Lamont B. Steptoe, illustrates the absolute pervasiveness and dominance of “white America” in American Society.  This comparison seems to suggest that while white America is the dominant majority, black America exists “elsewhere.”  In a previous presentation of this poem, Annie Ramirez suggests that the poem “leaves you with a feeling of isolation and despair.”

African-Americans have moved from slavery through segregation and into a sort of de facto segregation.  This is true in the literal, geographical sense and also suggests something more—that the overall African-American experience is one shared by it’s members, existing within and adding to American society, but separate from dominant culture experience. 

            In the following two stanzas, Baraka talks about “our world,” that is, the separate world of African-Americans.  He writes, “we are a beautiful people.”  He mentions specifically African traits, such as imagination, dances, and chants.  He later refers to “our black family.”  These images suggest unity and solidarity among African-Americans.  In this context, all African-Americans become a sort of family, although the origins of African-Americans reach back to many different African nations.  This sense of familial unity despite true blood ties, or even national ties, reflects one aspect of objective three for this course:  the need for minority groups to create alternative or improvised families in order to survive.  Granted, this is a more figurative, big-picture way of looking at this objective.  A more literal interpretation can be illustrated with Black Girl Lost.  In the novel, Sandy and Chink create an alternative family unit in order to survive the absence of a more traditional family unit.

Ultimately, Baraka uses these images and ideas to create a poem that expresses the experience of being Black in America, as well as sending a call to action to the family of African-Americans.  He reminds his African-American family of the “gray chains” still present “in a place full of winters.”  He writes, “we need magic…to raise up, return, destroy, and create.”  The poem not only affirms solidarity among African-Americans, but also seems to call for resistance instead of assimilation.  Assimilation, in fact, seems not to be an option.  One cannot assimilate to “gray chains,” literal o otherwise.  Baraka’s use of words such as masks, dances, and spells evoke images of animist religions practiced by many African nations and tribes.  He writes of “mak[ing] our getaway, into the ancient image, into a new correspondence.”  The poem seems to look to the past, a past before America, in order to discover a more positive future.  In this way Baraka’s poem echoes not only objective three as mentioned above, but also objective four, the minority dilemma of assimilation and resistance.  Finally, the poem also reflects one difference between the American Dream of immigrants and The Dream of minorities; the desire to forget the past versus the need to revisit and rectify the past in order to move productively into the future. [TNK]

ID #1

Unsettling America:  “Song No. 3” by Sonia Sanchez, p. 111; “Hanging Fire” by Audre Lorde, p.297

Two poems that express the feelings of a young African American girl are “Song No. 3,” by Sonia Sanchez and “Hanging Fire,” by Audre Lorde.  Both of these poems fulfill Objective 5a in that they use “…the power of poetry and fiction to help ‘others’ hear the minority voice and vicariously share the minority experience.”  However, the two authors use different styles in expressing their voice about the realities of life.  “Song No. 3” is written in an informal style, using child-like spelling and punctuation.  Vicki Issac states that the “poem is written as if a kid actually wrote it.”  Adelaide comments that the poem has a “jump rope beat” to it. On the other hand, “Hanging Fire” uses standard English and spelling.  Similarly, both authors use little punctuation to help the poems flow—each thought running into the other.

            The common theme found in both poems is the struggle for acceptance in the presence of injustice.  This fits in with Objective 2, “To observe representations and narratives (or images and stories) of ethnicity and gender as a means of defining minority categories.”  In “Song No.3” the little girl is dealing with the fact that her looks are not considered pretty and her clothes have holes in them.  Obviously poor, she states “i’m ugly and you know it too.”  She faces the injustice of not fulfilling someone else’s standard for beauty. Although the girl in “Hanging Fire” is in a different economic class, she still has her struggles with acceptance.  She is concerned about learning how to dance, with wearing braces, and having ashy knees.  She struggles with injustice because she did not make the Math Team even though she had the better grades.  She wonders “will I live long enough /to grow up.”  Both girls seem to feel isolated in their struggle for acceptance, yet the authors of the poems seem to be voicing that they are not alone. 

            The struggles and injustices young African American girls face are real. The idea of struggles, set backs, and hope are reflected in the Dream, which is Objective 3. The author of “Song No. 3” not only writes about the struggles and setbacks, but ends on a note of hope that one day the standards by which people are unjustly judged will be changed.  (“but, one day i hope somebody will stop me and say /looka here, a pretty little black girl lookin’ just like me.”) Conversely, “Hanging Fire” ends on a pessimistic note and the hope of the Dream is not expressed. [NB]

ID #1

Author:  Michael Warr

Title:  Brain on Ice; the El Train Poem

Pages:  85-86

First 10 lines of the second stanza.

I am the Color Purple

In a navy blue overcoat.

I am Bigger Thomas on his way to work.

I may be Nat Turner on urbanized revolt.

I am Mandingo

With a big  thick   black

Toshiba laptop.  I am Super Fly with Oxford collar

And Harvard law degree.

An invisible do-rag hovers above

My missing Malcolm X shades,

This excerpt, and in fact the entire poem, addresses objective 3a.  African American alternative narrative: “The Dream.”  The dream of African Americans is different from the traditional American Dream in that they face additional setbacks and are faced with problems attaining dignity as a group.  The speaker in the poem has attained all of the aspects of the traditional American Dream.  He is well-educated, well-paid, wears all of the right clothes, and reads all of the right books.  However, as this excerpt shows, society still does not see him this way.  The other passengers are influenced by popular media and stories of African American men that portray them as scary and problematic.  In 2004, Robert Lawing notes that the poem if full of allusion.  He states that the allusions to nice clothing, the Book Review, and the laptop, do not overpower the immigrant’s view of the speaker.  He is right in noting this.  The other passengers on the train look right through who the speaker really is, and what he has attained, and see the media’s portrait of an African American male.  They see him as a “do-rag” attired troublemaker, ready to beat them up and start riots.  This makes it impossible for him to truly be successful and attain the traditional American Dream because he cannot get away from the image, no matter how successful he becomes.  This particular excerpt works well as it makes it easy for the reader to picture the typical African American male stereotyped by our media. . . . [KD]

ID #1.

Safiya Henderson-Holmes, “Failure of an Invention” UA 60

Objectives: 1D “The Color Code”

                     4 “Assimilation or Resistance”

In “Failure of an Invention,” Holmes explains how she has tried to assimilate by changing her appearance but has come to realize that she will never be able to be America’s image of what is beautiful.  She starts off the poem with “i am not any of the faces you have put on me…” she goes on to say “I have tried to bleach…to narrow…begging entrance through the needle of your eye…” and she closes with “no matter what we’ve tried i’ve never been able to bear.”

Holmes’ poem addresses the color code because she focuses on her physical features which she has tried to change such as her skin, hair, and lips.  These features are what generally distinguishes minorities.  She states that “both of us” have tried to change these features, indicating that she herself and the dominant culture, which implies that because the dominant culture deemed these features to be unattractive, she took the initiative to change them in order to fit in, be accepted, and therefore assimilate.  She talks about lightning her skin with chemical bleach and in hopes to be white or “whiter” or “white like” in appearance resembling the dominant culture.  She also talks about straightening her hair and narrowing her lips to resemble the dominant culture.

After mentioning each of her attempts at change or assimilation, Holmes tells the ramifications such as going “deaf” from the names she was called and the cancer she sustained from the chemicals as well as pieces of herself that were broken in her trials.

Holmes’ tone is that of resignation.  One hears her desperate plea when she says “begging entrance” but she also states knowingly her obstacle of getting through “the needle of your eye.”  She knew that no matter what she did, the chances of her being accepted were slim and yet she tried to “squeeze” through, sacrificing and breaking pieces of herself in the process.  Holmes’ does not point a finger but rather she shares the blame for her tribulations.  She states “both of us” and “we’ve.”

Lastly, Holmes metaphorically mentions the “bone of yours in my back” which can symbolically be the burden she has carried concerning external fixation.  However, she concludes the poem stating that she has never been able to bear the “soul” which can be interpreted as the dominant culture’s ideals, morals, values, mentality, and so on.  Since her chances to fit in physically were slim to start off with, and since she could never adopt the ideals of the dominant culture, Holmes sees herself as a “failure of an invention.” [JS-K]

ID #1.

If a white middle class American male ever wondered what it was that caused the African American vote to be much smaller in representation at the poles than percentage of population the poem “Election Time,” by Lamont B. Steptoe may help to explain their case.  Objective 5a. in this class states that minority poetry can help others to hear the minority voice and vicariously share their experience and such is the case in reading Steptoe’s repetitive use (18 times) of the word “white.” “Still believe that white is the best thing to be,” was one of Steptoe’s most powerful statements in the poem.  Everything around him is white, but him. “That only talk about Blacks in connection with crime,” is only time he acknowledges blacks and it carries weight in Objective 1d., the color code, where white is good and black is evil.  The last objective represented in this poem is 6a which notes their distrust of the dominant cultural institutions.  Our government is unarguably founded on beliefs of the “whites,” and held together by the “whites,” and without question Steptoe is critical and mistrusting of the system full of “white” (250). [THF]

Song No. 3

(for 2^nd and 3^rd grade sisters)

By Sonia Sanchez

Pg 111

In Song No. 3 the author describes the frustration of knowing she is different.  Being different sets her apart and she knows others stare at her.  She says, "but I see how you stare when nobody's watching you."  The young girl in this poem seems to speak to the beginnings of the lifetime of being watched that African American's must endure.  This corresponds to class objective 2c which discusses how one can do a "quick check" on minority status by asking what the status of the relationship is between the law and minority group.  It is a heated political issue as whether African American groups are more closely "watched," than others.  The tone of this poem makes it clear that at an early age the child is very aware of being watched because she knows they see her as ugly and "black and skinny." This also is reflective of Objective 1d "The Color Code," and the idea of "light and dark," in relation to "good and evil."  The dominant white culture will categorize this child as ugly, dark, and evil.

 However, the tone seems to change near the end of the poem when she says, "but, one day I hope somebody will stop me and say looka here, a pretty little black girl lookin' just like me."  Suddenly the tone has changed to "someday."  This ties into objective 3a "The Dream."  No matter how bad things are now there is hope for the future that this girl will find someone like herself.  That she will one day be accepted as an equal by someone.  This last line seems tied to the title Song No. 3 (for 2^nd and 3^rd grade Sisters).  Much like Maya found her friend Louise at an elementary school age saying, "My friendship with Louise was solidified over jack, hopscotch and confessions, deep and dark, exchanged often after many a "Cross your heart you won't tell," it seems that the girl in the poem will find a friend (sister) in life over song no. 3 (Angelou, 159).  The simple school yard games and rhymes will be shared just as their appearance will be shared.

The poem begins with cynicism and frustration and the verses take us emotionally through the pain she feels but hides behinds an attitude of, 'you can't hurt me'. The fact that she never capitalizes "I" seems to add to the feeling of being outcast and unimportant. But, the last two lines of the poem leave the reader with a great sense of hope and relief that we all relate to when we find someone that is like us. [NL]

For this section of the midterm, I chose to write about Michael Warr’s “Brain on Ice The EL Train Poem.” Page 85-86

Objectives      1d Western civilization transfers values associated with good and evil to           people with light or dark complexions with enormous implications.

2b American culture officially regards itself as classless, race and gender often replace divisions of power, labor, ownership, or “place.”

3a Comparing the American Dream to “The Dream” with its setbacks

Outside the deco-art marble plantation

In which we all

Are hourly enslaved.  

            Warr’s concluding lines paint a picture in the reader’s imagination that is worth a thousand words. The African-American has only changed geography; instead of working on a cotton plantation down south, he has become a Harvard educated “slave” working in Milwaukee’s  “marble” plantation. Warr’s poem implores poetically, but not explicitly, “When will Dr. King’s Dream materialize for me?” The author’s frustration and desperation are never explicitly expressed, but his poetically indignant tone shows his exasperation at the institutional racism he faces. The author is on a journey; he has literally paid his fare to ride the El just as he has poetically paid his fare to participate in the American Dream by earning a Harvard Law degree. But even though he is allowed to ride the El, he is unwanted. Even though he has empowered himself with a Harvard Law degree, he is powerless in his quest for respect. Because of the color of his skin he is still shown little respect from even newly arrived, lower class, ignorant immigrants. The author shows all of the outward signs of an assimilated, successful participant in the American Dream, but the color of his skin is an inescapable badge he wears that instantly identifies him as inferior, regardless of his credentials. The El will arrive at its station, but he has obviously not arrived at his objective of fully realizing the American Dream. He has to cling to the hope entailed in Dr. King’s Dream that encourages: although we are not there yet, we are on our way. [SL]

The poem that I chose is Blonde White Women by Patricia Smith on page 77-79. The objective that this poem refers to is 1d, the color code. This poem really touches on the ideas of skin color and light and dark features. However, the focus of the poem is the fact that the African American girl in this poem is trying to assimilate as in objective 4 through the first half of the poem. She wants to straighten her hair like a white person, bleach her skin, make her hair golden, and color her skin white until it breaks. She even tries to do things that whites do. She tortured herself trying to be white. The second half of the poem deals with her resistance. She becomes distinct at this moment realizing her beautiful black skin. What seemed to initiate this is that the teacher praised her for her reading and she may have realized that literacy would help her overcome her difficulties in giving her a real voice, a distinct voice reflective of her identity, not of the dominant culture. Because of her resistance, she is thought of as treacherous, indicating that she is not allowed to be distinct. She has to assimilate in order to be treated with at least some respect.

            Poetically this poem is powerful in that it is set up beautifully. The reader learns the differences in assimilation and resistance of a minority and the consequences. The use of similes like “They choke cities like snowstorms” really animates the English language. The figurative level of this is so true and instead of saying that dominant culture only accepts assimilation which causes pain and loss for minorities. Instead of saying all that and much more, that one simile speaks a thousand words. [SM]

One of the poems most striking to me so far was Safiya Henderson-Holmes’s Friendly Town #1.  Throughout the poem she uses vivid colorful pictures to contrast a rather drab inner city life.  In multiple reading of the poem I found that the third and fourth stanzas of the poem really said a lot about the actual point of the poem.  In these stanzas, she refers to a place where the young children could get away from the oppression of the inner city.  She definitely expresses a feeling of freedom in this “country” as she uses words like “run”, “air”, “sleep”, and “wings”.  These two stanzas are offered up in contrast to the original point of departure, which seems to be an inner city school described with colors like “blueblack” and “brownbeige”.  Even with this sense of freedom however, there is a feeling of doubt on her part which seems to run throughout all of the African-American literature read so far.  When she states “at least this is what the counselor said” she seems to be implying that maybe this place is too good to be true or that the counselor, which is a white female, should not be trusted.  In all of this Safiya does maintain the feeling of a child’s innocence and curiosity. . . . [PN]

The poem “Hanging Fire”, page 297, relates to objective 5a. This objective is “To discover the power of poetry and fiction to help “others” hear the minority voice and vicariously share the minority experience”. The author, Audre Lorde, is trying to show the difficulties a young African American girl goes through. She uses her poetry to allow “others” to better understand African American girls by showing her difficulties that all young girls go through and difficulties that are unique to African American girls. By showing the difficulties that are common, other cultures can identify with African Americans in ways that they might not have before. If other cultures can identify with African Americans in this way, maybe they can better understand the difficulties that are unique to African Americans.

The specific passage that emphasizes the objective is in the first and second stanzas. The author writes “I am fourteen – and my skin has betrayed me”. This shows the complications that an African American fourteen year old has. A white fourteen year old might not understand this or know that an African American girl would struggle with this. To allow other fourteen year old girls to identify with her, the author writes, “I have to learn how to dance – in time for the next party”. This is something that all teenagers go through, no matter what culture they are in. It is a small part of growing up and trying to fit in with everyone else. The author wants others to know that in addition to struggles that everyone goes through, African Americans have other things to deal with. This might not otherwise have been noticed by those in different cultures. . . . [LJ]