Black Culture Essay

During the Harlem Renaissance, writers, especi completelyy filthyamoor ones, portrayed the colored shade and style in their writing. They used black assumptions, generalizations and stereotypes to show, what they thought was, the black culture. Not all of this was far from the truth. Three writers, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Sterling Brown argon examples of writers that emulated black culture in their works. Langston Hughes works, The Negro Speaks of Rivers, Mother to Son, When Sue Wears Red, The Weary Blues, I, Too, and Harlem are examples of the portrayal of black culture through 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 looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. / I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln/ went down to New Orleans, and Ive moldn its muddy/ bosom turn all rosy in the sunset (Hughes 1291). In Mother to Son, he describes advice of a mother 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 button up struggling to get even further. She describes her trials and tribulations as tacks/and splinters/ and boards torn 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 withstand climbing that crystal stair. This is because the mother knows how fleshy it is to get ahead in the world when youre black and that everything that blacks have they have worked hard to get. When Sue Wears Red describes the beauty of the black womanhood.He compares Susannas face o an ancient cameo/ turned brown by the ages. He excessively compares to a queens form almost time-dead Egyptian night (Hughes 1293). The Weary Blues portrays the musical side of the black culture, describin g a man playing that sad raggy variant like a musical fool and singing in a deep song voice with a melancholy tone The music that comes from a black mans soul (Hughes 1294). I, Too show the degrading manner in which black populate were treated. The black house workers were treated as if they were inferior or not fit to be around white people.This is shown when the worker tells us, they send me to eat in the kitchen/ when company comes. Due to the high hopes and inclination of black people, this does not discourage the speaker. He knows that, one day, hell be at the table/ when company comes. / Nobodyll dare/ say to me/ eat in the kitchen/theyll see how beautiful I am/ and be ashamed (Hughes 1295). He believes that one day black people impart be accepted and will be able to eat with the whites. This attitude is what kept blacks striving to succeed.Harlem questions what may happen if black people put off their dreams and progression. This delay may be willing or by force but eith er way the dreams may dry up/ like a raisin in the sun or stink like rotten meat or even worse explode (Hughes 1309). Stopping black people from fulfilling their dreams would at worst cause a rebellion. This rebellion may not be nonviolent. Sterling Brown uses poems such 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 both Odyssey of Big Boy and Southern Road. In Odyssey of Big Boy, Brown gives sight to some of the folklore heroes of the black culture, such as Casey Jones and Stagolee (Brown 1248). This not only shows the heroes represented in black culture but also their use of stories past down through the generations to keep the culture alive. He goes on to describe the manual labor that black people have done over the ages.This includes how they skinned as a boy in Kentucky hills/druv steel there 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 about working in a chain gang, a father dying, tone ending to jail and white men degrading the black man.Slim Greer is about 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 many ways they used to express themselves, so, for the most part, they had a grea t talent 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 listen 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 authorise pass, How IT Feels To Be Colored Me, and Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston wrote a great deal about the togetherness in the black community. Many of her stories, including these three works, took place in an solo 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 having an affair with a woman named Bertha. They badmouth Sykes, saying how horrible and stupid he is for cheat ing on a god woman like Delia, particularly 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 back in overalls.They immediately begin to talk about her. They make assumptions, such as Tea Cake take all of her money and abandoned her. They talk about how silly she was for taking off with a younger man in the first place and whatsoever 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. learning works written in the time gives us a good look into what the black society was actually like back then.