Directions: Read the two literary pieces below. Then answer the questions.
Artifact A: Poem: A Dream B: Essay Excerpt: How it feels to Colored Me by Zora Neale Hurston Deferred by Langston Hughes
Literary What happens to a Sometimes it is the other way around. A white person is set down in our midst, but the Piece dream deferred? contrast is just as sharp for me. For instance, when I sit in the drafty basement that is Does it dry up The New World Cabaret with a white person, my color comes. We enter chatting about any little nothing that we have in common and are seated by the jazz waiters. like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— In the abrupt way that jazz orchestras have, this one plunges into a number. It loses no And then run? time in circumlocutions, but gets right down to business. It constricts the thorax and Does it stink like rotten splits the heart with its tempo and narcotic harmonies. This orchestra grows meat? rambunctious, rears on its hind legs and attacks the tonal veil with primitive fury, rending Or crust and sugar it, clawing it until it breaks through to the jungle beyond. I follow those heathen--follow over— them exultingly. I dance wildly inside myself; I yell within, I whoop; I shake my assegai above my head, I hurl it true to the mark yeeeeooww! I am in the jungle and living in the like a syrupy sweet? jungle way. My face is painted red and yellow and my body is painted blue. My pulse is Maybe it just sags throbbing like a war drum. I want to slaughter something--give pain, give death to what, I like a heavy load. do not know. But the piece ends. The men of the orchestra wipe their lips and rest their Or does it explode? fingers. I creep back slowly to the veneer we call civilization with the last tone and find the white friend sitting motionless in his seat, smoking calmly.
"Good music they have here," he remarks, drumming the table with his fingertips.
Music. The great blobs of purple and red emotion have not touched him. He has only heard what I felt. He is far away and I see him but dimly across the ocean and the continent that have fallen between us. He is so pale with his whiteness then and I am so colored.
At certain times I have no race, I am me. When I set my hat at a certain angle and saunter down Seventh Avenue, Harlem City, feeling as snooty as the lions in front of the Forty-Second Street Library, for instance. So far as my feelings are concerned, Peggy Hopkins Joyce on the Boule Mich with her gorgeous raiment, stately carriage, knees knocking together in a most aristocratic manner, has nothing on me. The cosmic Zora emerges. I belong to no race nor time. I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads.
I have no separate feeling about being an American citizen and colored. I am merely a fragment of the Great Soul that surges within the boundaries. My country, right or wrong.
Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me.
Page 1 “American Dream” Literature
Context Harlem was written in Hurston grew up in the African American town of Eatonville, Florida. Between 1865 and 1951 during a time 1900 more than 100 independent towns were founded by African Americans escaping when many blacks felt racial prejudice. Hurston’s early exposure to Whites was tourists passing through limited in their ability to Eatonville. Hurston wrote the essay How it Feels to be Colored Me in 1928 exploring the achieve 'The American differences between Whites and Blacks. Dream.' Although the Civil War was long over and blacks technically had the right to vote, schools were still segregated and many blacks could only find basic jobs that didn't provide them with a future.
Word Deferred-to put off New World Cabaret-a club
Bank circumlocutions-the use of more words than necessary to express an idea constrict-to squeeze or compress thorax-part of body, chest exultingly-joyously assegai-a type of light spear used in southern Africa. veneer-superficial, desireable outside covering something less desirable inside Peggy Hopkins Joyce on the Boule Mich-a wealthy women walking along the Boulevar Saint-Michel in Paris. raiment-clothing aristocratic- noble, elite, upper-class, “blue-blooded” cosmic-relating to the universe
