Breaking the Sheltering Bar: A Response Essay

Afri layabout American literature has been prolific and appreciated especially during the early twentieth century, the duration when inequality was rampant and lynching and infanticide were the results of the racial supremacy of the White Americans. belles-lettres was an important tool to voice out reactions, ideologies, representations, truths and suggestions about the state of the extravert changes in the American ordination.Through the anti-lynching literature of Georgia Douglas Johnson and the introduction of African American culture in James Weldon Johnson, we will take an in astuteness look at literal and critical interpretations of a selection of poems and contemplate intertextually how these literary selections merge and provide context about the African American heritage.James Weldon Johnson in his poem The Creation pictured God as psyche people can understand or relate to. He was not depicted as an illusory idea, but humanized to an extent we can picture God. It wa s written in a vernacular similar to a preaching, with nearly familiar language and style similar to African American lingo. It describes organism in a lyrical manner, with repetitive lines.The poem depicts not totally a biblical story but too a impost and a culture imbibed African Americans. The composition of the poem was written resembling a sermon. We can see that certain biblical styles present in the poem. This trend combined with the lyrical trend similar to gospel songs visualize a way of incorporating native oral traditions in African American cultures. In Rubn Jarazos hold James Weldon Johnson. The foul Bard, simplicity and clarity be present in James Weldon Johnsons literary styles.African American culture and society had its roots from slavery and discrimination, caged in a mould that there is a superior, imperialist society all over them. Such ideas of discrimination had developed into the use of literature especially in the early twentieth century to express and react and suggest what they quality in the scrutiny of other races.According to Rubn Jarazo in his article James Weldon Johnson, The Black Bard, African American academics and the general voice of the society had placed their voices on paper, creating a boom of interest in African American writing. This is what they called the Harlem Renaissance. This movement gave way for the exploration of Black Americans past, and present, as well as representing their individuality and ethnic distinction.The transition of the localise of racial purity became more complex with the concept of cosmopolitanism. In the good example of White and Black Americans having children, there is a new wave of discrimination as to where to draw the lines of superiority. This created literature about cosmopolites.Georgia Douglas Johnson has always portrayed the provide and importance of the cosmopolitanism. African American culture as embedded in the cultural roots of American society. She defined this concept in the poem Cosmopolite.The African American race was depicted to be a mixed bag of different bloods, a product of the interplay in historical and tender contexts. They are extraterrestrial beingated but not alienated she stands comprehending from the condition of her life she facial expression earths frail dilemma she is a descendant of fused strengths.Nothing contains her. She established the concept of the cosmopolite as a merge amidst two bloods, and though the cosmopolite seems alienated, nothing contains her, for she has this new strength, a cultural marriage between the African and American sensibilities. The issue is not any longer about the distinction between the two but how the concept of being one is affective of the society they are in.These social and interracial contexts also appeared in Georgia Douglas Johnsons poems. In The Heart of a adult female, she depicted the imagery of a woman, as a bird, in the subscribe to of dawn a flying through turrets a nd vales, but still encaged in a concept of a home. As night falls, she becomes encaged in an alien plight, still in an inevitable seclusion.According to C.C. OBrien in the article Cosmopolitanism in Georgia Douglas Johnsons Anti-Lynching Literature, womens domesticism over the patriarchy and masculinity of imperialism connotes the status of African American status in society. As much as they cherished to be free, freedom is not absolute.The White patriarchy that assumes a thug and protective shelter, prohibits people to grow and take part in society. This can be interpreted in a way as OBrien depicted the desire of African American communities for equality in social and political facets.