USA HISTORY

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THE ROARING 20S 1920 1929

ART AND CULTURE OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE

Question [CLICK ON ANY CHOICE TO KNOW THE RIGHT ANSWER]
“The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem, / through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas, / Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and then I come to the Y, / the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator/ up to my room, sit down and write this page:” In Theme for English B, Hughes makes the point about how he gets home to do this paper because
A
he lives in a dangerous neighborhood.
B
e’s trying to show the great distance he has to walk.
C
he’s showing that he lives in a world much different than that of the instructor.
D
he’s indicating how poverty plays a role in his life.
Explanation: 

Detailed explanation-1: -“Harlem” is not just a poem about the American dream or the dreams of African Americans. Rather, it reimagines the city at the center of “the long history in which black global dreams have foundered on the shoals of America’s racial dilemma, ” in Nikhil Pal Singh’s memorable words.

Detailed explanation-2: -“Theme for English B” is a poem about the complexities of identity in a racist society. Its speaker-a black student at Columbia University in the 1950s-receives an apparently straightforward assignment: to write one page about himself.

Detailed explanation-3: -Langston Hughes’s poem “Dream Deferred” is speaks about what happens to dreams when they are put on hold. The poem leaves it up to the reader to decide what dream is being questioned. In the opening of the poem the speaker uses a visual image that is also a simile to compare a dream deferred to a raisin.

Detailed explanation-4: -It’s more likely that the school mentioned is the City College of New York, which is in fact on a hill in Harlem. These lines tell us something else important about our speaker-he takes his education seriously, since he’s stayed with it through multiple institutions.

There is 1 question to complete.
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