“And I felt independent, as the queen upon here throne” (Baym 2012). This simile ties together the thought of a woman’s struggle for an education in the poem, “Learning to Read”, by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Through Harper’s deployment of the character, Chloe, the author conveys the importance of knowledge that a sixty-year-old African American woman yearns, through the specific use of altered diction, change in tone, and imagery to show that knowledge is power. In the beginning of the poem, Chloe shows the use of poor diction when she articulates how the “Rebs hate it” because school was “agin’ their rule” (Baym 2012).
Within her poem “On Being Brought from Africa to America,” Phillis Wheatley takes a rather unique stance regarding the concept of slavery, a topic that was controversial during her time. Wheatley begins by stating that it was “mercy” that had brought her from her native “Pagan” land to the world of God and Salvation. With her embedded passion within the poem, a reader can easily infer that Phillis truly appreciates that she was able to learn the notions of Redemption and Heaven from her gruesome travels. This is a rather ironic situation a former slave could be in, for her physical pain would drastically outweigh her spiritual revelation. Later on, Wheatley proceeds to address the racial issue that was prevalent in America.
The
Soon after he was inspired to write this shady poem, he approached Billie Holiday a famous African American singer to voice his poem as a song. This song voiced by her brings a very emotional and horrifying event about the oppression against people of colors at the Southern of United States in the early twentieth century. Therefore, I will be covering this song in depth from top to bottom about the opening stanza that starts the background of injustice and inequality actions minorities of blacks had encounter in the Southern America, explain how this song really means to Billie Holiday, shows how some element poetry is broken down in this poem, and successfully point out how this poem to affect our lynching in the history of America. First, throughout the poem of “Strange
Walker’s personal account talks about a young black woman know as Phillis Wheatley and her struggle to self-express, “... [she] did try to use her gift for poetry in a world that made her a slave, she was so thwarted and hindered by...contrary instincts, that she...lost her health” and she died (Walker 404). Phillis Wheatley died because she was a black woman; therefore, she was not even allowed to be literate. Walker, putting aside her resentment towards Wheatley, acknowledges that, “had [Wheatley] been white, she would have been easily considered the intellectual superior of all women and most men in the society of her day” (Walter 404). Wheatley knowing that no one would help her or give her that recognition she deserved impacted her health.
