Advertisement
a poem about black history: Hey Black Child Useni Eugene Perkins, 2017-11-14 Six-time Coretta Scott King Award winner and four-time Caldecott Honor recipient Bryan Collier brings this classic, inspirational poem to life, written by poet Useni Eugene Perkins. Hey black child, Do you know who you are? Who really are?Do you know you can be What you want to be If you try to be What you can be? This lyrical, empowering poem celebrates black children and seeks to inspire all young people to dream big and achieve their goals. |
a poem about black history: African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song (LOA #333) Kevin Young, 2020-10-20 A literary landmark: the biggest, most ambitious anthology of Black poetry ever published, gathering 250 poets from the colonial period to the present Across a turbulent history, from such vital centers as Harlem, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and the Bay Area, Black poets created a rich and multifaceted tradition that has been both a reckoning with American realities and an imaginative response to them. Capturing the power and beauty of this diverse tradition in a single indispensable volume, African American Poetry reveals as never before its centrality and its challenge to American poetry and culture. One of the great American art forms, African American poetry encompasses many kinds of verse: formal, experimental, vernacular, lyric, and protest. The anthology opens with moving testaments to the power of poetry as a means of self-assertion, as enslaved people like Phillis Wheatley and George Moses Horton and activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper voice their passionate resistance to slavery. Young’s fresh, revelatory presentation of the Harlem Renaissance reexamines the achievements of Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen alongside works by lesser-known poets such as Gwendolyn B. Bennett and Mae V. Cowdery. The later flowering of the still influential Black Arts Movement is represented here with breadth and originality, including many long out-of-print or hard-to-find poems. Here are all the significant movements and currents: the nineteenth-century Francophone poets known as Les Cenelles, the Chicago Renaissance that flourished around Gwendolyn Brooks, the early 1960s Umbra group, and the more recent work of writers affiliated with Cave Canem and the Dark Room Collective. Here too are poems of singular, hard-to-classify figures: the enslaved potter David Drake, the allusive modernist Melvin B. Tolson, the Cleveland-based experimentalist Russell Atkins. This Library of America volume also features biographies of each poet and notes that illuminate cultural references and allusions to historical events. |
a poem about black history: Black Nature Camille T. Dungy, 2009 Black Nature is the first anthology to focus on nature writing by African American poets, a genre that until now has not commonly been counted as one in which African American poets have participated. Black poets have a long tradition of incorporating treatments of the natural world into their work, but it is often read as political, historical, or protest poetry--anything but nature poetry. This is particularly true when the definition of what constitutes nature writing is limited to work about the pastoral or the wild. Camille T. Dungy has selected 180 poems from 93 poets that provide unique perspectives on American social and literary history to broaden our concept of nature poetry and African American poetics. This collection features major writers such as Phillis Wheatley, Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sterling Brown, Robert Hayden, Wanda Coleman, Natasha Trethewey, and Melvin B. Tolson as well as newer talents such as Douglas Kearney, Major Jackson, and Janice Harrington. Included are poets writing out of slavery, Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century African American poetic movements. Black Nature brings to the fore a neglected and vital means of considering poetry by African Americans and nature-related poetry as a whole. A Friends Fund Publication. |
a poem about black history: Have You Thanked an Inventor Today? Patrice McLaurin, 2016-05-01 Have You Thanked an Inventor Today? is a journey into the often forgotten contributions of African-American inventors, that contributed to the American landscape. This book was written to appeal to African-American youth, inspiring creative thought and innovation. It was also written to demonstrate to children how the genius of African-American minds is utilized on a daily basis. Biographies about each inventor, as well as activity sheets are included in the book to further stimulate the minds of young readership. |
a poem about black history: The Vintage Book of African American Poetry Michael S. Harper, Anthony Walton, 2012-02-01 In The Vintage Book of African American Poetry, editors Michael S. Harper and Anthony Walton present the definitive collection of black verse in the United States--200 years of vision, struggle, power, beauty, and triumph from 52 outstanding poets. From the neoclassical stylings of slave-born Phillis Wheatley to the wistful lyricism of Paul Lawrence Dunbar . . . the rigorous wisdom of Gwendolyn Brooks...the chiseled modernism of Robert Hayden...the extraordinary prosody of Sterling A. Brown...the breathtaking, expansive narratives of Rita Dove...the plaintive rhapsodies of an imprisoned Elderidge Knight . . . The postmodern artistry of Yusef Komunyaka. Here, too, is a landmark exploration of lesser-known artists whose efforts birthed the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts movements--and changed forever our national literature and the course of America itself. Meticulously researched, thoughtfully structured, The Vintage Book of African-American Poetry is a collection of inestimable value to students, educators, and all those interested in the ever-evolving tradition that is American poetry. |
a poem about black history: The 100 Best African American Poems Nikki Giovanni, 2010 Discover the voices of a culture from legendary New York Timesbestselling author Nikki Giovanni HEAR: Langston Hughes Gwendolyn Brooks Countee Cullen Paul Laurence Dunbar Robert Hayden Etheridge Knight READ: Rita Dove Sonia Sanchez Richard Wright Tupac Shukar Lucille Clifton Mari Evans Kevin Young Including one audio CD featuring many of the poems read by the poets themselves, 100 Best African-American Poems is at once strikingly original and a perfect fit for the original poetry anthologies from Sourcebooks, including Poetry Speaks, The Spoken Word Revolution, Poetry Speaks to Children, and the Nikki Giovanni-edited Hip Hop Speaks to Children. Award-winning poet and writer Nikki Giovanni takes on the difficult task of selecting the 100 best African-American works from classic and contemporary poets. This startlingly vibrant collection spans from historic to modern, from structured to free-form, and reflects the rich roots and visionary future of African-American verse in American culture. The resulting selections prove to be an exciting mix of most-loved chestnuts and daring new writing. Most of all, the voice of a culture comes through in this collection, one that is as talented, diverse, and varied as its people. |
a poem about black history: 28 Days of Poetry Celebrating Black History Latorial Faison, 2007-02 28 Days of Poetry: Volume 1 is an eclectic collection of poems celebrating the history and legacy of African-Americans. The book reflects on slavery and the civil rights movement and paints poetic pictures of the south during a time when America was a divided nation. Young readers will enjoy biographical poems that tell the history of black inventors and other notable leaders in American history. This is the first book of a series written by Faison celebrating Black History. |
a poem about black history: Bars Fight Lucy Terry Prince, 2020-10-28 Bars Fight, a ballad telling the tale of an ambush by Native Americans on two families in 1746 in a Massachusetts meadow, is the oldest known work by an African-American author. Passed on orally until it was recorded in Josiah Gilbert Holland's History of Western Massachusetts in 1855, the ballad is a landmark in the history of literature that should be on every book lover's shelves. |
a poem about black history: Lord, Why Did You Make Me Black? Runett Nia Ebo, 2000-10-01 |
a poem about black history: The Poems of Phillis Wheatley Phillis Wheatley, 2012-03-15 At the age of 19, Phillis Wheatley was the first black American poet to publish a book. Her elegies and odes offer fascinating glimpses of the beginnings of African-American literary traditions. Includes a selection from the Common Core State Standards Initiative. |
a poem about black history: Jazz Griots Jean-Philippe Marcoux, 2012-06-27 This study is about how four representative African American poets in the 1960s, Langston Hughes, Umbra’s David Henderson, and the Black Arts Movement’s Sonia Sanchez, and Amiri Baraka engage, in the tradition of African griots, in poetic dialogues with aesthetics, music, politics, and Black History, and in so doing narrate, using jazz as meta-language, genealogies, etymologies, cultural legacies, and Black (hi)stories. In intersecting and complementary ways, Hughes, Henderson, Sanchez, and Baraka fashioned their griotism from theorizations of artistry as political engagement, and, in turn, formulated a Black aesthetic based on jazz performativity –a series of jazz-infused iterations that form a complex pattern of literary, musical, historical, and political moments in constant cross-fertilizing dialogues with one another. This form of poetic call-and-response is essential for it allows the possibility of intergenerational dialogues between poets and musicians as well as dialogical potential between song and politics, between Africa and Black America, within the poems. More importantly, these jazz dialogisms underline the construction of the Black Aesthetic as conceptualized respectively by the griotism of Hughes, of Henderson, and of Sanchez and Baraka. |
a poem about black history: American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin Terrance Hayes, 2018-06-19 Finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry One of the New York Times Critics' Top Books of 2018 A powerful, timely, dazzling collection of sonnets from one of America's most acclaimed poets, Terrance Hayes, the National Book Award-winning author of Lighthead Sonnets that reckon with Donald Trump's America. -The New York Times In seventy poems bearing the same title, Terrance Hayes explores the meanings of American, of assassin, and of love in the sonnet form. Written during the first two hundred days of the Trump presidency, these poems are haunted by the country's past and future eras and errors, its dreams and nightmares. Inventive, compassionate, hilarious, melancholy, and bewildered--the wonders of this new collection are irreducible and stunning. |
a poem about black history: History Is a Part of Me S. Lenice Tubbs, Golden Sky Level Publications "Staff", 2015-06-15 History Is A Part of Me coloring book is an educational Hip Hop rhyme/poem of African American Inventors and their inventions. It includes actual patents. Inventors like Garret Morgan, Madam CJ Walker, Fred Jones. It also includes Barrack Obama |
a poem about black history: I Am a Black Woman Mari Evans, 1970 |
a poem about black history: The Black Poets Dudley Randall, 1985-04-01 The claim of The Black Poets to being... an anthology is that it presents the full range of Black-American poetry, from the slave songs to the present day. It is important that folk poetry be included because it is the root and inspiration of later, literary poetry. Not only does this book present the full range of Black poetry, but it presents most poets in depths, and in some cases presents aspects of a poet neglected or overlooked before. Gwendolyn Brooks is represented not only by poems on racial and domestic themes, but is revealed as a writer of superb love lyrics. Tuming away from White models and retuming to their roots has freed Black poets to create a new poetry. This book records their progress.--from the Introduction by Dudley Randall |
a poem about black history: Newspaper Blackout Austin Kleon, 2014-03-18 Poet and cartoonist Austin Kleon has discovered a new way to read between the lines. Armed with a daily newspaper and a permanent marker, he constructs through deconstruction—eliminating the words he doesn't need to create a new art form: Newspaper Blackout poetry. Highly original, Kleon's verse ranges from provocative to lighthearted, and from moving to hysterically funny, and undoubtedly entertaining. The latest creations in a long history of found art, Newspaper Blackout will challenge you to find new meaning in the familiar and inspiration from the mundane. Newspaper Blackout contains original poems by Austin Kleon, as well as submissions from readers of Kleon's popular online blog and a handy appendix on how to create your own blackout poetry. |
a poem about black history: Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral Phillis Wheatley, 1887 |
a poem about black history: The Book of American Negro Poetry James Weldon Johnson, 2009-01-01 The work of James Weldon Johnson (1871 - 1938) inspired and encouraged the artists of the Harlem Renaissance,a movement in which he himself was an important figure. Johnson was active in almost every aspect of American civil life and became one of the first African-American professors at New York University. He is best remembered for his writing, which questions, celebrates and commemorates his experience as an African-American. |
a poem about black history: The ABCs of Black History Rio Cortez, 2020-12-08 A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER B is for Beautiful, Brave, and Bright! And for a Book that takes a Bold journey through the alphabet of Black history and culture. Letter by letter, The ABCs of Black History celebrates a story that spans continents and centuries, triumph and heartbreak, creativity and joy. It’s a story of big ideas––P is for Power, S is for Science and Soul. Of significant moments––G is for Great Migration. Of iconic figures––H is for Zora Neale Hurston, X is for Malcom X. It’s an ABC book like no other, and a story of hope and love. In addition to rhyming text, the book includes back matter with information on the events, places, and people mentioned in the poem, from Mae Jemison to W. E. B. Du Bois, Fannie Lou Hamer to Sam Cooke, and the Little Rock Nine to DJ Kool Herc. |
a poem about black history: Poems on Slavery Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1842 |
a poem about black history: And Still I Rise Maya Angelou, 2011-08-17 Maya Angelou’s unforgettable collection of poetry lends its name to the documentary film about her life, And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS’s American Masters. Pretty women wonder where my secret lies. I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size But when I start to tell them, They think I’m telling lies. I say, It’s in the reach of my arms, The span of my hips, The stride of my step, The curl of my lips. I’m a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That’s me. Thus begins “Phenomenal Woman,” just one of the beloved poems collected here in Maya Angelou’s third book of verse. These poems are powerful, distinctive, and fresh—and, as always, full of the lifting rhythms of love and remembering. And Still I Rise is written from the heart, a celebration of life as only Maya Angelou has discovered it. “It is true poetry she is writing,” M.F.K. Fisher has observed, “not just rhythm, the beat, rhymes. I find it very moving and at times beautiful. It has an innate purity about it, unquenchable dignity. . . . It is astounding, flabbergasting, to recognize it, in all the words I read every day and night . . . it gives me heart, to hear so clearly the caged bird singing and to understand her notes.” |
a poem about black history: Bunk Kevin Young, 2017-11-14 Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction “There Kevin Young goes again, giving us books we greatly need, cleverly disguised as books we merely want. Unexpectedly essential.”—Marlon James Award-winning poet and critic Kevin Young tours us through a rogue’s gallery of hoaxers, plagiarists, forgers, and fakers—from the humbug of P. T. Barnum and Edgar Allan Poe to the unrepentant bunk of JT LeRoy and Donald J. Trump. Bunk traces the history of the hoax as a peculiarly American phenomenon, examining what motivates hucksters and makes the rest of us so gullible. Disturbingly, Young finds that fakery is woven from stereotype and suspicion, race being the most insidious American hoax of all. He chronicles how Barnum came to fame by displaying figures like Joice Heth, a black woman whom he pretended was the 161-year-old nursemaid to George Washington, and What Is It?, an African American man Barnum professed was a newly discovered missing link in evolution. Bunk then turns to the hoaxing of history and the ways that forgers, plagiarists, and journalistic fakers invent backstories and falsehoods to sell us lies about themselves and about the world in our own time, from pretend Native Americans Grey Owl and Nasdijj to the deadly imposture of Clark Rockefeller, from the made-up memoirs of James Frey to the identity theft of Rachel Dolezal. In this brilliant and timely work, Young asks what it means to live in a post-factual world of “truthiness” where everything is up for interpretation and everyone is subject to a pervasive cynicism that damages our ideas of reality, fact, and art. |
a poem about black history: Being Brought from Africa to America - The Best of Phillis Wheatley Phillis Wheatley, 2020-07-31 Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753–1784) was an American freed slave and poet who wrote the first book of poetry by an African-American. Sold into a slavery in West Africa at the age of around seven, she was taken to North America where she served the Wheatley family of Boston. Phillis was tutored in reading and writing by Mary, the Wheatleys' 18-year-old daughter, and was reading Latin and Greek classics from the age of twelve. Encouraged by the progressive Wheatleys who recognised her incredible literary talent, she wrote To the University of Cambridge” when she was 14 and by 20 had found patronage in the form of Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon. Her works garnered acclaim in both England and the colonies and she became the first African American to make a living as a poet. This volume contains a collection of Wheatley's best poetry, including the titular poem “Being Brought from Africa to America”. Contents include: “Phillis Wheatley”, “Phillis Wheatley by Benjamin Brawley”, “To Maecenas”, “On Virtue”, “To the University of Cambridge”, “To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty”, “On Being Brought from Africa to America”, “On the Death of the Rev. Dr. Sewell”, “On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield”, etc. Ragged Hand is proudly publishing this brand new collection of classic poetry with a specially-commissioned biography of the author. |
a poem about black history: Magical Negro Morgan Parker, 2019-02-05 A National Book Critics Circle Poetry Award Winner! From the breakout author of There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé comes a profound and deceptively funny exploration of Black American womanhood. Morgan Parker's latest collection is a riveting testimony to everyday blackness . . . It is wry and atmospheric, an epic work of aural pleasures and personifications that demands to be read—both as an account of a private life and as searing political protest. —TIME Magazine A Best Book of 2019 at TIME, Elle, BuzzFeed, the Star Tribune, AVClub, and more. A Most Anticipated Book of 2019 at Vogue, O: the Oprah Magazine, NYLON, BuzzFeed, Publishers Weekly, and more. Magical Negro is an archive of black everydayness, a catalog of contemporary folk heroes, an ethnography of ancestral grief, and an inventory of figureheads, idioms, and customs. These American poems are both elegy and jive, joke and declaration, songs of congregation and self-conception. They connect themes of loneliness, displacement, grief, ancestral trauma, and objectification, while exploring and troubling tropes and stereotypes of Black Americans. Focused primarily on depictions of black womanhood alongside personal narratives, the collection tackles interior and exterior politics—of both the body and society, of both the individual and the collective experience. In Magical Negro, Parker creates a space of witness, of airing grievances, of pointing out patterns. In these poems are living documents, pleas, latent traumas, inside jokes, and unspoken anxieties situated as firmly in the past as in the present—timeless black melancholies and triumphs. |
a poem about black history: The Hill We Climb Amanda Gorman, 2021-03-30 The instant #1 New York Times bestseller and #1 USA Today bestseller Amanda Gorman’s electrifying and historic poem “The Hill We Climb,” read at President Joe Biden’s inauguration, is now available as a collectible gift edition. “Stunning.” —CNN “Dynamic.” —NPR “Deeply rousing and uplifting.” —Vogue On January 20, 2021, Amanda Gorman became the sixth and youngest poet to deliver a poetry reading at a presidential inauguration. Taking the stage after the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden, Gorman captivated the nation and brought hope to viewers around the globe with her call for unity and healing. Her poem “The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country” can now be cherished in this special gift edition, perfect for any reader looking for some inspiration. Including an enduring foreword by Oprah Winfrey, this remarkable keepsake celebrates the promise of America and affirms the power of poetry. |
a poem about black history: A Visit from St. Nicholas Clement Clarke Moore, 1921 A poem about the visit that Santa Claus pays to the children of the world during the night before every Christmas. |
a poem about black history: Mother Maya Angelou, 2006-04-11 Perfect for Mother’s Day, or for any day on which we wish to acknowledge this all-important bond, Mother is an awe-inspiring affirmation of the enduring love that exists in every corner of the globe. With her signature eloquence and heartfelt appreciation, renowned poet and national treasure Maya Angelou celebrates the first woman we ever knew: Mother. “You were always the heart of happiness to me,” she acknowledges in this loving tribute, “Bringing nougats of glee / Sweets of open laughter.” From the beginnings of this profound relationship through teenage rebellion and, finally, to adulthood, where we stand to inherit timeless maternal wisdom, Angelou praises the patience, knowledge, and compassion of this remarkable parent. |
a poem about black history: Ain't I A Woman? Sojourner Truth, 2020-09-24 'I am a woman's rights. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I am as strong as any man that is now' A former slave and one of the most powerful orators of her time, Sojourner Truth fought for the equal rights of Black women throughout her life. This selection of her impassioned speeches is accompanied by the words of other inspiring African-American female campaigners from the nineteenth century. One of twenty new books in the bestselling Penguin Great Ideas series. This new selection showcases a diverse list of thinkers who have helped shape our world today, from anarchists to stoics, feminists to prophets, satirists to Zen Buddhists. |
a poem about black history: Poems of the Black Object Ronaldo V. Wilson, 2009 Poetry. African American Studies. Asian American Studies. LGBT Studies. Winner of the Publishing Triangle's 2010 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry and the 13th Annual Asian American Literary Award for Poetry. I applaud Ronaldo Wilson's pathbreaking movement into what has never, never, in history, been said. About sexuality, in particular, these poems speak with incorrigible and raving clarity. And, always, they display intellectual curiosity, and an impatient, gorgeous readiness to make language new. Wayne Koestenbaum A] warning to anyone tempted to believe that in objectification lies freedom. Livid inside an apocalyptic negative capability, these poems are constructed through their maker's deconstruction, and reading, I too, felt unmade. Claudia Keelan Ronaldo Wilson's POEMS OF THE BLACK OBJECT turns the parenthetical inside out, contents kicking and alive, person, race and being: where fate is in store in you, not for you, out there; in consciousness, and barely conscious, where consciousness is the accumulation of the scarcely discernible experiences. Wilson's poems captures states of person, the thinking being, the being thinking, the being perceived, and all the slippage between stages of person, Black and on the page, folding and unfolding layers of social construction. Erica Hunt The force here is in the erotic attachment between the human figures certainly but also (and more surprisingly) between history and present-day experience. Ronaldo Wilson teases the reader with earnestness while he refracts event and experience. The effect is dazzling. The poems are panoramic. One part slave narrative, one part pillow book, POEMS OF THE BLACK OBJECT is a triumph of the social lyric: violent, tender, absurd. G.E Patterson For all the disturbances examined in this intensely lucid book of bodily desire, dead porn stars, and the high art of human survival, the voice of these poems manages to maintain a kind of giddy composure. Perhaps the trick of it comes through his sense that, 'pattern organizes trauma, and so does speed.' It's not so fast, the pace here; we're made to look, to see, with shrewd intention. It's that Ronaldo Wilson's writing doesn't let you get too comfortable. It shifts experience and reckoning from poem to essay, theory to epistle, these intuitive modes of a person in search of a particular poetics, darting around sharp visions that could bloody or shine on the tempestuous landscape 'the black object' emerges from. Tisa Bryant |
a poem about black history: Phillis Wheatley Vincent Carretta, 2011 Reveals the fascinating life of Phillis Wheatley, the first English-speaking person of African descent to publish a book, and only the second woman to do so in America, and also to do so while she was a slave and a teenager. |
a poem about black history: Light For The World To See Kwame Alexander, 2020-11-17 From NPR correspondent and New York Times bestselling author, Kwame Alexander, comes a powerful and provocative collection of poems that cut to the heart of the entrenched racism and oppression in America and eloquently explores ongoing events. A book in the tradition of James Baldwin’s “A Report from Occupied Territory,” Light for the World to See is a rap session on race. A lyrical response to the struggles of Black lives in our world . . . to America’s crisis of conscience . . . to the centuries of loss, endless resilience, and unstoppable hope. Includes an introduction by the author and a bold, graphically designed interior. |
a poem about black history: The Black Maria Aracelis Girmay, 2016-04-18 Taking its name from the moon's dark plains, misidentified as seas by early astronomers, The Black Maria investigates African diasporic histories, the consequences of racism within American culture, and the question of human identity. Central to this project is a desire to recognize the lives of Eritrean refugees who have been made invisible by years of immigration crisis, refugee status, exile, and resulting statelessness. The recipient of a 2015 Whiting Award for Poetry, Girmay's newest collection elegizes and celebrates life, while wrestling with the humanistic notion of seeing beyond: seeing violence, seeing grace, and seeing each other better. to the sea great storage house, history on which we rode, we touched the brief pulse of your fluttering pages, spelled with salt & life, your rage, your indifference your gentleness washing our feet, all of you going on whether or not we live, to you we bring our carnations yellow & pink, how they float like bright sentences atop your memory's dark hair Aracelis Girmay is the author of two poetry collections, Teeth and Kingdom Animalia, which won the Isabella Gardner Award and was a finalist for the NBCC Award. The recipient of a 2015 Whiting Award, she has received grants and fellowships from the Jerome, Cave Canem, and Watson foundations, as well as Civitella Ranieri and the NEA. She currently teaches at Hampshire College's School for Interdisciplinary Arts and in Drew University's low residency MFA program. Originally from Santa Ana, California, she splits her time between New York and Amherst, Massachusetts. |
a poem about black history: Stepmotherland Darrel Alejandro Holnes, 2022-02-01 Stepmotherland is a tour-de-force debut collection about coming of age, coming out, and coming to America. Winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, Stepmotherland, Darrel Alejandro Holnes’s first full-length collection, is filled with poems that chronicle and question identity, family, and allegiance. This Central American love song is in constant motion as it takes us on a lyrical and sometimes narrative journey from Panamá to the USA and beyond. The driving force behind Holnes’s work is a pursuit for a new home, and as he searches, he takes the reader on a wild ride through the most pressing political issues of our time and the most intimate and transformative personal experiences of his life. Exploring a complex range of emotions, this collection is a celebration of the discovery of America, the discovery of self, and the ways they may be one and the same. Holnes’s poems experiment with macaronic language, literary forms, and prosody. In their inventiveness, they create a new tradition that blurs the borders between poetry, visual art, and dramatic text. The new legacy he creates is one with significant reverence for the past, which informs a central desire of immigrants and native-born citizens alike: the desire for a better life. Stepmotherland documents an artist’s evolution into manhood and heralds the arrival of a stunning new poetic voice. |
a poem about black history: Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea Nikki Giovanni, 2010-12-28 A resonant, powerful collection from one of America’s preeminent poets. In Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea, Nikki Giovanni turns her pen to nature and the environment, the might and grace of women, her battle with cancer, the relationships between mothers and daughters, the state of the nation, and more. |
a poem about black history: The Fat Black Woman's Poems Grace Nichols, 2023-06-13 Beauty is a fat black woman walking the fields pressing a breezed hibiscus to her cheek while the sun lights up her feet Nichols gives us images that stare us straight in the eye, images of joy, challenge, accusation. Her 'fat black woman' is brash; rejoices in herself; poses awkward questions to politicians, rulers, suitors, to a white world that still turns its back. Grace Nichols writes in a language that is wonderfully vivid yet economical of the pleasures and sadnesses of memory, of loving, of 'the power to be what I am, a woman, charting my own futures'. |
a poem about black history: Piecing Me Together Renée Watson, 2018-02-08 2018 Newbery Honor Book and Coretta Scott King Author Award Winner: a beautiful, powerful coming of age story 'Important and deeply moving' JOHN GREEN 'Timely and timeless' JACQUELINE WOODSON Jade is a girl striving for success in a world that seems like it's trying to break her. She knows she needs to take every opportunity that comes her way. And she has: every day Jade rides the bus away from her friends to a private school where she feels like an outsider, but where she has plenty of opportunities. But some opportunities Jade could do without, like the mentor programme for 'at-risk' girls. Just because her mentor is black doesn't mean she understands where Jade is coming from. Why is Jade always seen as someone to fix? But with a college scholarship promised at the end of it, how can Jade say no? Jade feels like her life is made up of hundreds of conflicting pieces. Will it ever fit together? Will she ever find her place in the world? More than anything, Jade just wants the opportunity to be real, to make a difference. NPR's Best Books of 2017 A 2017 New York Public Library Best Teen Book of the Year Chicago Public Library's Best Books of 2017 A School Library Journal Best Book of 2017 Kirkus Reviews' Best Teen Books of 2017 2018 Josette Frank Award Winner |
a poem about black history: Counting Descent Clint Smith, 2020-01-06 From the author of How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America * Winner, 2017 Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary Award * Finalist, 2017 NAACP Image Awards * One Book One New Orleans 2017 Book Selection * Published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, New Republic, Boston Review, The Guardian, The Rumpus, and The Academy of American Poets So many of these poems just blow me away. Incredibly beautiful and powerful. -- Michelle Alexander, Author of The New Jim Crow Counting Descent is a tightly-woven collection of poems whose pages act like an invitation. The invitation is intimate and generous and also a challenge; are you up to asking what is blackness? What is black joy? How is black life loved and lived? To whom do we look to for answers? This invitation is not to a narrow street, or a shallow lake, but to a vast exploration of life. And you’re invited. -- Elizabeth Acevedo, Author of Beastgirl & Other Origin Myths These poems shimmer with revelatory intensity, approaching us from all sides to immerse us in the America that America so often forgets. -- Gregory Pardlo Counting Descent is more than brilliant. More than lyrical. More than bluesy. More than courageous. It is terrifying in its ability to at once not hide and show readers why it wants to hide so badly. These poems mend, meld and imagine with weighted details, pauses, idiosyncrasies and word patterns I've never seen before. -- Kiese Laymon, Author of Long Division Clint Smith's debut poetry collection, Counting Descent, is a coming of age story that seeks to complicate our conception of lineage and tradition. Do you know what it means for your existence to be defined by someone else’s intentions? Smith explores the cognitive dissonance that results from belonging to a community that unapologetically celebrates black humanity while living in a world that often renders blackness a caricature of fear. His poems move fluidly across personal and political histories, all the while reflecting on the social construction of our lived experiences. Smith brings the reader on a powerful journey forcing us to reflect on all that we learn growing up, and all that we seek to unlearn moving forward. |
a poem about black history: The Negro William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, 1915 |
a poem about black history: Teach Living Poets Lindsay Illich, Melissa Alter Smith, 2021 Teach Living Poets opens up the flourishing world of contemporary poetry to secondary teachers, giving advice on reading contemporary poetry, discovering new poets, and inviting living poets into the classroom, as well as sharing sample lessons, writing prompts, and ways to become an engaged member of a professional learning community. The #TeachLivingPoets approach, which has grown out of the vibrant movement and community founded by high school teacher Melissa Alter Smith and been codeveloped with poet and scholar Lindsay Illich, offers rich opportunities for students to improve critical reading and writing, opportunities for self-expression and social-emotional learning, and, perhaps the most desirable outcome, the opportunity to fall in love with language and discover (or renew) their love of reading. The many poems included in Teach Living Poets are representative of the diverse poets writing today. |
a poem about black history: This Is My Century Margaret Walker, 2013-10-15 In selecting Margaret Walker as the recipient of the Yale Series of Younger Poets in 1942—making her the first African American to receive this national literary award—Stephen Vincent Benét proclaimed hers a vibrant new voice, finding in her collection For My People “a controlled intensity of emotion and a language that, at times, even when it is most modern, has something of a surge of biblical poetry.” Today, more than seventy years later, Walker’s voice still resonates with particular power. Addressing the literature and culture of black America, This Is My Century, first published in 1989, marked a significant contribution to American poetry, bringing together Walker’s selection of one hundred of her own poems. On the eve of the centennial of Walker’s birth, the University of Georgia Press is proud to reissue this classic of American letters. In addition to her award-winning debut collection, the volume includes Prophets for a New Day (1970), a celebration of the civil rights movement; October Journey (1973), a collection of autobiographical and dedicatory poems; and thirty-seven previously uncollected poems. |
Black History Month Poems “I, Too” by Langston Hughes
Black is as beautiful as the bright rising sun. Black is as beautiful as a simple kiss placed on the forehead. Black is as beautiful as lilies on Easter morning. Black is as beautiful as saying I love …
Black History Month Poem - Poems on the Underground
Black History Month We are delighted to mark BHM with a selection of poems by Black poets with close links to England, Scotland, the United States, the Caribbean and Africa. The poets …
Hey Black Child blanks - WordPress.com
Mar 22, 2018 · Hey Black Child, Be what you can be Learn what you must learn Do what you can do And tomorrow your nation will be what you want it to be "HEY _____ CHILD" Hey _____ …
Black History Month Poem - Parking Suns
I wrote this poem for an in-school broadcast devoted to Black History Month. “BBL” stands for my school’s name, the Bronx Charter School for Better Learning. An amazing actress on the staff …
AQA English GCSE Poetry: Power and Conflict - The Coleshill …
Black history is given separated, dedicated stanzas which could be seen to symbolise it finally receiving the respect and significance it deserves. The rich imagery in these stanzas …
Langston Hughes - poems - Poem Hunter
Through the black American oral tradition and drawing from the activist experiences of her generation, Mary Langston instilled in the young Langston Hughes a lasting sense of racial pride.
Black History Month Poem a Day - mainedoenews.net
Title: Black History Month Poem a Day Author: Stephanie Hendrix Keywords: DAE3Fa4hsp4,BACN_PrrUyQ Created Date: 2/1/2022 12:24:27 PM
Black History Poems For Church Program
black history poems for church program: A History of African American Poetry Lauri Ramey, 2019-03-21 Offers a critical history of African American poetry from the transatlantic slave trade to …
POEMS THAT EMPOWER - National Museum of African …
Share this special lesson from Maya Angelou. Then, think about and discuss, "What can I do to be a rainbow in someone's cloud?" In Life Doesn't Frighten Me, Maya Angelou uses words to …
School of Theology BU Prophet
A Poem titled Black History by Tony Baugh the prophet / February 6, 2019 / “For Mr. Brown, and all of my beloved sons.” Last night I had a dream then awoke in Matthew Henson’s back yard …
Black History Month Poem - brucewriting.com
I wrote this poem for an in-school broadcast devoted to Black History Month. “BBL” stands for my school’s name, the Bronx Charter School for Better Learning.
Celebrating Black History Month Illustrate a Poem - Maine
Celebrating Black History Month 2021 Illustrate a Poem ontents: 1) Art utensils Poems mean or how they make you feel. lank bookmark lank paper as you think about the poem? ollage …
Poem Black History Month - interactive.cornish.edu
Poem Black History Month: 28 Days of Poetry Celebrating Black History Latorial Faison,2007-02 28 Days of Poetry Volume 1 is an eclectic collection of poems celebrating the history and …
AQA English GCSE Poetry: Power and Conflict - Physics
Black history is given separated, dedicated stanzas which could be seen to symbolise it finally receiving the respect and significance it deserves. The rich imagery in these stanzas …
What Hughes’ powerful poem “I, Too" tells us about America
Sep 29, 2016 · (A) The opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture is an important symbol in recognizing the struggles of African Americans; Langston Hughes’ …
Black History Month Poem - poemsontheunderground.org
during Black History Month, this contribution is celebrated in this Poems on the Underground leaflet. Featured are the voices of Black poets from around the world, with several additions …
Black History Month Poem - old.icapgen.org
collection of poems celebrating the history and legacy of African Americans The book reflects on slavery and the civil rights movement and paints poetic pictures of the south during a time …
Poem Black History Month (2024) - interactive.cornish.edu
Celebrating Black History Latorial Faison,2007-02 28 Days of Poetry Volume 1 is an eclectic collection of poems celebrating the history and legacy of African Americans The book reflects …
ELIZABETH ALEXANDER'S AMISTAD: Reading the Black …
Like her precursor, Robert Hayden, Elizabeth Al-exander enters the archive to construct a black history poem that might alter the way we remember our complex and multiple American …
CELEBRATING BLACK HISTORY 2023 POEM/SHORT STORY …
Month theme BLACK RESISTANCE Contestants must be North Miami Residents, or attend a North Miami public or private High School. Submission Deadline: Wednesday, February 23, 2023
Black History Month Poems “I, Too” by Langston Hughes
Black is as beautiful as the bright rising sun. Black is as beautiful as a simple kiss placed on the forehead. Black is as beautiful as lilies on Easter morning. Black is as beautiful as saying I …
Black History Month Poem - Poems on the Underground
Black History Month We are delighted to mark BHM with a selection of poems by Black poets with close links to England, Scotland, the United States, the Caribbean and Africa. The poets …
Hey Black Child blanks - WordPress.com
Mar 22, 2018 · Hey Black Child, Be what you can be Learn what you must learn Do what you can do And tomorrow your nation will be what you want it to be "HEY _____ CHILD" Hey _____ …
Black History Month Poem - Parking Suns
I wrote this poem for an in-school broadcast devoted to Black History Month. “BBL” stands for my school’s name, the Bronx Charter School for Better Learning. An amazing actress on the staff …
AQA English GCSE Poetry: Power and Conflict - The Coleshill …
Black history is given separated, dedicated stanzas which could be seen to symbolise it finally receiving the respect and significance it deserves. The rich imagery in these stanzas …
Langston Hughes - poems - Poem Hunter
Through the black American oral tradition and drawing from the activist experiences of her generation, Mary Langston instilled in the young Langston Hughes a lasting sense of racial pride.
Black History Month Poem a Day - mainedoenews.net
Title: Black History Month Poem a Day Author: Stephanie Hendrix Keywords: DAE3Fa4hsp4,BACN_PrrUyQ Created Date: 2/1/2022 12:24:27 PM
Black History Poems For Church Program
black history poems for church program: A History of African American Poetry Lauri Ramey, 2019-03-21 Offers a critical history of African American poetry from the transatlantic slave trade to …
POEMS THAT EMPOWER - National Museum of African …
Share this special lesson from Maya Angelou. Then, think about and discuss, "What can I do to be a rainbow in someone's cloud?" In Life Doesn't Frighten Me, Maya Angelou uses words to …
School of Theology BU Prophet
A Poem titled Black History by Tony Baugh the prophet / February 6, 2019 / “For Mr. Brown, and all of my beloved sons.” Last night I had a dream then awoke in Matthew Henson’s back yard …
Black History Month Poem - brucewriting.com
I wrote this poem for an in-school broadcast devoted to Black History Month. “BBL” stands for my school’s name, the Bronx Charter School for Better Learning.
Celebrating Black History Month Illustrate a Poem - Maine
Celebrating Black History Month 2021 Illustrate a Poem ontents: 1) Art utensils Poems mean or how they make you feel. lank bookmark lank paper as you think about the poem? ollage …
Poem Black History Month - interactive.cornish.edu
Poem Black History Month: 28 Days of Poetry Celebrating Black History Latorial Faison,2007-02 28 Days of Poetry Volume 1 is an eclectic collection of poems celebrating the history and …
AQA English GCSE Poetry: Power and Conflict - Physics
Black history is given separated, dedicated stanzas which could be seen to symbolise it finally receiving the respect and significance it deserves. The rich imagery in these stanzas …
What Hughes’ powerful poem “I, Too" tells us about America
Sep 29, 2016 · (A) The opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture is an important symbol in recognizing the struggles of African Americans; Langston Hughes’ …
Black History Month Poem - poemsontheunderground.org
during Black History Month, this contribution is celebrated in this Poems on the Underground leaflet. Featured are the voices of Black poets from around the world, with several additions …
Black History Month Poem - old.icapgen.org
collection of poems celebrating the history and legacy of African Americans The book reflects on slavery and the civil rights movement and paints poetic pictures of the south during a time …
Poem Black History Month (2024) - interactive.cornish.edu
Celebrating Black History Latorial Faison,2007-02 28 Days of Poetry Volume 1 is an eclectic collection of poems celebrating the history and legacy of African Americans The book reflects …
ELIZABETH ALEXANDER'S AMISTAD: Reading the Black …
Like her precursor, Robert Hayden, Elizabeth Al-exander enters the archive to construct a black history poem that might alter the way we remember our complex and multiple American …
CELEBRATING BLACK HISTORY 2023 POEM/SHORT STORY …
Month theme BLACK RESISTANCE Contestants must be North Miami Residents, or attend a North Miami public or private High School. Submission Deadline: Wednesday, February 23, 2023