Thursday, January 22, 2004

Response 2 due.

Leads: Raven G., David S.

Reading

• Zora Neale Hurston, “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” (Oates 114–119)

Notes

Leads have been excellent so far — keep up the good work!

Hurston is an interesting figure from the Harlem Renaissance. You can read Alice Walker’s “Looking for Zora” (Oates 395–411) to learn more about her life. Questions:

• What power does Hurston find in identity?
• The tone is radically different in Hurston’s and Baldwin’s essays. Why do you suppose this is so?

On Tuesday I mentioned two things by Langson Hughes. One is his review of Baldwin’s “Notes of a Native Son”; the other is “Harlem” (1951):

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore —
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over —
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?