Afro American Writing Essay, Research Paper

Fully explicate one of Francis Harper?s poems. Include explanations of the

Themes she attempts to convey.

Bury Me in a Free Land ? Francis Harper

The ultimate theme of this poem was stated in the title. Francis Harper wanted to see slavery go away before her death. The haunting lines of text she so gracefully wrote expressed the horror involved in having to die a slave.

This work starts right into her fear of dying a slave. Her humble phrase in the first paragraph sets the stage.

?Make me a grave where?er you will,

In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill;

Make it among earth?s humblest graves,

But not in a land where men are slaves.?

Right away Harper shows the equality of all men without emphasizing race when she says, ?But not in a land where MEN are slaves?. This is one of the first signs of rebellion in poetry, and I can only imagine the courage it must have taken her as a black, female slave.

Harper?s powerful words invite us into the world of slavery from the eyes of a black woman. Dying in a world of slavery to Harper would be an eternal nightmare of the horrible lives lived by those who remain in slavery.

5.Define dehumanization and trace its manifestation in the works of several writers.

Dehuminization starts manifesting long before the slaves start using poetry to speak out. Jupiter Hammon states in his ?An address to Miss Phillis Wheatley? that Slavery was worth being exposed to Christianity. This is an early manifestation of dehuminization because this is what the Slave owners used to pacify themselves as well as appease the minds of the hard laboring slaves.

Slaves were now being born into slavery and this is what black Americans thought life was supposed be like. This is shown directly in George Horton?s ?Slavery?, but still a gloom hope of freedom and liberty kindled in the lives of these early poets.

Samuel Ward?s ?Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro? shows strong dehuminization in the simple things of life such as, not knowing when he was born. Douglas spent his entire life trying to find out his birth date.

In Frances Harper?s ?The Slave Auction?, dehuminization takes it?s toll.

?And mothers stood with streaming eyes,

And saw their dearest children sold;

Unheeded rose their bitter crise,

While tyrants bartered them for gold.?

Children are being ripped from their parents and sold into slavery. What could be more dehuminizing to a child? Or for a mother.

Frances Harper says it best with her theme of this passage, ?Death is Better?.

3. Defend Wheatley and Hammon.

Phillis Wheatley (?1753-1784)

Phillis Wheatley couldn?t focus as strong on the cruel and dehuminizing effects of slavery because she really didn?t know much about it. She was purchased as a domestic servant by John Wheatley and accompanied them to Colonial America, a literary province of England. Her primary focus as a writer was on English Poetry, because there was no Afro-American society for her to reflect, nor was there an Afro-American audience for her to address.

One of Wheatley?s works, ?On Being Brought from Africa to America?, shows that Blacks too can be educated and that in the Kingdom of Heaven, there will be no skin color.

Jupiter Hammon (?1720-1800)

Another domestic servant of a more Colonial America, he lived in rural Long Island, 1where it is likely that his life was one of uneventful labor, reading and churchgoing. He also did not personally know enough about the unmoral events happening in slavery to write on it. His focus an American writer was on the moralization that slavery has brought Afro-Americans to Christianity. This is shown directly in his work, ?An address to Phillis Wheatley?.

?O, come, you pious youth! Adore

The wisdom of they God,

In bringing thee from distant shore,

To learn His holy word,?