A proud dad showing off his daughter's work.

I'm going to be a typical dad and show off a paper my youngest daughter recently turned in for her English class at North Greenville University. She is an excellent writer and this paper really shows that.

Enjoy:

Harmonious Dissonance:

African-American Cultural Hybridity in the Harlem Renaissance

Voices heard or unheard, voices of different tone and pitch, voices from different walks of life, voices lyrical and poetic, voices direct or even mundane have called out, intertwined in struggle and purpose, exposing the harmonious dissonance that is African-American identity. Pulled from a swamp of oppression, ill treatment, and shame, African-Americans in the 1920’s faced a social atmosphere of racial tension, which required them to face head-on the problem of double consciousness. Would the black man become “white” in order to gain acceptance in culture? Would he dull his “African-ness” and become a whispered African in order to become a shouted American? Did only the racist majority define a black woman by the color of her skin or did she confine herself to be dictated by her exterior in the name of black pride or supporting the beauty of her race?

The voices of the Harlem Renaissance speak to this plight. Looking through the lens of American literature, specifically that of the Harlem Renaissance, one can gain incredible insight into the struggle of cultural hybridity for the African American. The literature exposes the precarious balance between African and American and the fight for the ability to enjoy one’s current country and yet remember one’s roots. Not every voice within the era sang the same tune. Some voices rang out deep and strong for the beauty of the African race and defied any attempt to be made white, while others sang their own song as an individual and sought to keep race on the exterior instead of internalizing it into who they were as a human being.

Langston Hughes

“One of the most promising of the young Negro poets said to me once, ‘I want to be a poet – not a Negro poet,’ meaning, I believe, ‘ I want to write like a white poet’; meaning subconsciously ‘I would like to be a white poet’; meaning behind that, ‘I would like to be white.’ And I was sorry the young man said that, for no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself.” (Hughes 1512) This quote from Hughes epitomizes the driving force behind Hugh’s mentality. Langston Hughes possessed a strong African voice. He spoke out against the black culture of the day that, in his eyes, tried to be as white as possible in order to fit in and have a successful life. Hughes saw this as a denial of an African-American’s true identity and an affront to black culture. To Hughes, the greatest thing was to be black and to be proud of it. In his poem “I, Too” he unveils this superior mentality through the smug laughter of the narrator. Even though the white men had always demeaned the black man, he stood strong and proud of his beauty and worth. Hughes wrote a series of short stories entitled, “Laughing to Keep From Crying” in some of which he portrayed multiple situations of black men with white men and the ensuing events depicting the social landscape and attempting to bring out the superiority of African-Americans. Hughes’s voice was very clear on his opinion concerning race. The black race was a beautiful race that had been suppressed and denied the right to glory in their worth. Hughes used his pen to paint African colors and emotions in such a way that would inspire his race to rise up and take a stand. Hughes’s works teemed with the theme of African-American identity and he pushed with all of his might that African-American’s might recognize their heritage and beauty instead of assimilating into the colorless world around them.

Claude McKay

“For the dim regions whence my fathers came / My spirit, bondaged by the body, longs.” ( 1922) Claude McKay’s voice joined Langston Hughes in his support of the African portion of the African-American identity. Although not an American by birth, McKay’s literature addresses keenly the struggle of the African-American, and his work speaks to suppression of African culture. The above quote is from McKay’s poem “Outcast” which bemoans the loss of the African-American’s identity due to the influence of the west. When McKay penned the words, “My soul would sing forgotten jungle songs. / But the great western world holds me in fee, / And I may never hope for full release / While to its alien gods I bend my knee, / Something in me is lost, forever lost, / Some vital thing has gone out of my heart, / And I must walk the way of life a ghost” (1689) he vibrantly illustrated what occurred when, from his perspective, African American’s became “Americanized.” The “whitening” of a black man was more than just an accommodation or assimilation; it was a stealing of soul and worth. A black man under the intense pressure of a white world was not free to be who he really was. McKay, like Hughes, depicted this struggle and painted pictures of African-American culture. He used his voice to sing out in harmony with Hughes to support the African of an African-American.

Zora Neal Hurston

“But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. … Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world – I am too busy sharpening my oyster.” (Hurston 1711) In dissonance with the songs of Hughes and McKay, the song Hurston sings sounds less strongly of black pride, and heavier of individuality. Rather than depicting the pain, sorrow and oppression of African-American culture and allowing the promotion of her race to drive her, Hurston used her knowledge of her culture and study of the oral narrative tradition to present balanced pictures of African-American life. She did write about her culture and history, but not with the same driving passion and burning anger and resentment of Hughes. Hurston sought to balance her life as an individual with her roots and her depiction of that in her writing. In “How It Feels to Be Colored Me,” Hurston uses the analogy of colored bags containing basically the same contents, give or take an item or two to describe humans of different skin color. Unlike Hughes’s and McKay’s poetry intertwining so deeply the color of a man’s skin to his soul, Hurston uses this analogy to show that the color of skin, the exterior need not define the soul of a being. While not dismissing the culture and totally assimilating into a white world, Hurston’s voice sang a different tune than that of other authors during the Harlem Renaissance by pulling a step back and identifying herself as an individual rather than a black woman.

Phylis Wheatly

“'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, / Taught my benighted soul to understand / That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too: / Once I redemption neither sought nor knew. / Some view our sable race with scornful eye, / "Their colour is a diabolic die." / Remember, Christians, Negro's, black as Cain, / May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.” (Wheatly) While not actually a writer of the Harlem Renaissance, Phylis Wheatly was the first black woman poet and offers a distinctly different song. In the struggle of African-American hybridity and the fight for identity, the voice of Phylis Wheatly sings a sweeter, calmer, more peaceful song. Wheatly herself was a slave and of all of these writers seems to have the most reason to be bitter and fight for black freedom and pride. However, while in slavery, Wheatly was introduced to Christ and became a believer. This transformation in her life caused her to find blessing in what others considered the worst curse. Wheatly’s treatment of America within her literature was gracious and loving, for it was the place that brought her to her Savior. The slave ship was not a ship of death and oppression for Wheatly. She even chose to keep the name given her by her owners, which is something that would have been an affront to the later African-American writers like Hughes. This first published black woman author presents irony when contrasted to the later Harlem Renaissance authors, but her calm peaceful tone as a result of the change Christ had made in her heart might be a healing balm in the wounds of present day African-American culture if one looks deeper for the reason, and sees Christ, not an African-American woman selling out to the white world around her.

Jazz

“Jazz to me is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America: the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro Soul – the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile.” (Hughes 1512) Langston Hughes’s “definition” of jazz begins to touch on the importance of this music to African-American culture. With so many voices intertwining in this identity struggle, jazz was almost a centralization, a unified voice of African-American identity. Rooted in the Negro spirituals and some would claim, even deeper in African music, jazz is truly African-American, truly hybrid. The rise in urbanization brought spirituals to the city and intertwined the city life of black men and women with the rhythms and soulful expressions of African music. Langston Hughes viewed jazz as essential to African-American culture and used it as a voice to speak the heart of his people. “The Weary Blues” takes on the form and rhythm of the music it depicts and the reader can almost feel more of the meaning within this poem than he could read straight off of the page. Zora Neal Hurston, in “How it Feels to be Colored Me”, seems to claim that one of the differences between her race and others is contained within the ability to relate to jazz. As an African-American, this music speaks deep into her soul and pulls from within her the African that sometimes lies sleeping, while a white man simply enjoys the toe-tapping tunes he hears. The syncopation and improvisation of jazz broke into the heavily structured music around it and awoke something within listeners that gave it a communicative ability unmatched, some would claim even to this day. Jazz affected the form of literature by infusing a musical strain into words, but it also dug deep into the struggle and soul of a culture. The music that originated simply within the African-American sphere spread like wildfire and transformed the whole of musicality. “The ability of African performance arts to transform the European tradition of composition while assimilating some of its elements is perhaps the most striking and powerful evolutionary force in the history of modern music.” (Gioia 8) The power that jazz possessed within culture could have stemmed from many things, but when considered in conjunction with the literature and the social landscape of the time, it seems that some of its power comes from the fire it was born out of. Jazz is not simply a little tune someone came up with one day; Jazz is the expression of thousands of souls, the cries of millions of voices, the heartbeat of a culture steeped in turmoil. With that source, it is no wonder that it transformed the landscape of music.

The unique, harmonious yet dissonant song of hybridity for the African-American weaved throughout a tumultuous landscape in the 1920’s and further and left that land forever changed. What is an African-American? No unified answer responds to that haunting question. Even into the present authors and artists still fight for a definition. The struggle, however, left behind a beautiful legacy and inspired a nation. This battle for identity continues almost inevitably because the tension forever remains. The hyphen always separates the African from the American, but somewhere along the line there comes a recognition of an identity that does not lose itself in that struggle.