African American and Anglo Culture in Poetry

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African American and Anglo Culture in Poetry

When we think of home, everyone has similar thoughts about the subject. Home is a place to live, to sleep, to raise children, to have fun, a place to call your own. Even though all of these descriptions ring true for all people, each person or groups of people have gone through different situations within their community that makes their definition of home unique. Speaking from the African-American point of view, the Sunday dinners with family, the daily rituals, family coming over to watch important sporting events, and many more things makes the African-American home different from the typical Anglo home. Lucille Clifton (p. 286) and Langston Hughes (p. 124) do an excellent job at briefly describing some of defining events and present them in a way that makes the reader active in the experience.
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In reading Clifton's poem "For de Lawd," I recalled some of the stories that my grandmother told me about her childhood. The old-time music playing in the back while the family goes about it's daily routine and the mother of the house being the backbone of the house and supporting it too, both of which were briefly covered in the poem. Clifton describes the characteristics of the black woman by telling us that she "come[s] from a line of black and going on women who got used to" surviving the hard times. As the poem progresses, it more ...

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