The Fourth Of July, By Audre Lorde

709 Words2 Pages

Things don’t always go as planned in life. Young people in general always want the best in life but it is critical for them to learn that there are always some challenges ahead. In “The Fourth of July” Audre Lorde speaks of when she first experienced racism when on a trip to Washington D.C. While in “Salvation” by Langston Hughes, he had a “mental break down” after attending a revival meeting at his Aunt Reed’s church. Life can hit hard in the young stages of life. At the time both Langston Hughes and Audre Lorde were living with their families when they were leaving childhood. The Hughes family and the Lorde family had some things in common. Audre Lorde’s family was a fortunate family that was able to go on a pleasure trip to Washington D.C. …show more content…

Langston Hughes was spending time with his aunt and uncle at the time. He was from an African American family. The family was not the poorest of families but quite the opposite. He even had his own room in his aunt and uncle’s home. The family was a Christian family and the story took place at his aunt’s church revival. Both families had a huge role to play in both Lorde’s and Hughes’s lives. Audre’s parents tried to shield their children from the harsh type for racism that was happening in the U.S in 1940’s. They knew that the discrimination against blacks would have a negative effect on her. Audre’s parents also wanted to make sure they were treated equally and that she and her sister got the chance to experience what the other children at the school would have gotten to see. On the other hand, Langston Hughes aunt was trying to deliver him to Jesus making sure he was saved. His aunt was looking out for him spiritually. Aunt Reid insisted that Langston attended the revival and even told him what to expect. She and her church members would pray and sing over to make sure he would find …show more content…

For Audre while in Washington D.C she encountered how discriminative people could be when at a restaurant with her family. Phyllis, Audre’s sister school wasn’t able to travel there with her school. While sitting with the family a white waitress would tell them that they were not able to stay and eat. Now that shocked Audre because it was the first time she had experienced first-hand this discriminative act. She was furious of this injustice. Her parents had nothing to say and her sisters was as quiet as the parents. She wrote a letter to The President of the United States. She then expressed her anger on everything that she remembered that was white as she said “The waitress was white, and the counter was white, and the ice cream I never ate in Washington D.C.” (Lorde

Show More
Related

  • How Does Langston Hughes Use Strength In Mother To Son

    1500 Words  | 3 Pages

    Langston Hughes wrote during a very critical time in American History, the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes wrote many poems, but most of his most captivating works centered around women and power that they hold. They also targeted light and darkness and strength. The Negro Speaks of Rivers and Mother to Son, both explain the importance of the woman, light and darkness and strength in the African-American community. They both go about it in different ways.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Fourth Of July By Audre Lorde

    843 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the short story, “Fourth of July”, Audre Lord transmits the main message of how one should resist and retaliate when afflicted to prejudice. Lorde displays the message of prejudice early in the story when she describes the complications Phyllis had trying to get to Washington D.C. with her high school senior class, just because she is a different skin color as the others. Lorde writes “Phyllis’s high school senior class trip had been to Washington, but the nuns had given her back her deposit in private, explaining to her that the class, all of whom were white, except Phyllis, would be staying in a hotel where Phyllis ‘Would not be happy,’ meaning, Daddy explained to her, also in private, that they did not rent rooms to Negroes. ‘We will

    Read More

  • Audre Lorde The Fourth Of July Analysis

    1304 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Audre Lorde’s bildungsroman essay “The Fourth of July” (1997), she recalls her family’s trip to the nation’s capital that represented the end of her childhood ignorance by being exposed to the harsh reality of racialization in the mid 1900s. Lorde explains that her parents are to blame for shaping her skewed perception of America by shamefully dismissing frequent acts of racism. Utilizing copious examples of her family being negatively affected by racism, Lorde expresses her anger towards her parents’ refusal to address the blatant, humiliating acts of discrimination in order to emphasize her confusion as to why objecting to racism is a taboo. Lorde’s use of a transformational tone of excitement to anger, and dramatic irony allows those

    Read More

  • Langston Hughes Biography Essay

    565 Words  | 2 Pages

    Like most, the stories we hear as children leave lasting impacts in our heads and stay with us for lifetimes. Hughes was greatly influenced by the stories told by his grandmother as they instilled a sense of racial pride that would become a recurring theme in his works as well as become a staple in the Harlem Renaissance movement. During Hughes’ prominence in the 20’s, America was as prejudiced as ever and the African-American sense of pride and identity throughout the U.S. was at an all time low. Hughes took note of this and made it a common theme to put “the everyday black man” in most of his stories as well as using traditional “negro dialect” to better represent his African-American brethren. Also, at this time Hughes had major disagreements with members of the black middle class, such as W.E.B. DuBois for trying to assimilate and promote more european values and culture, whereas Hughes believed in holding fast to the traditions of the African-American people and avoid having their heritage be whitewashed by black intellectuals.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Fourth Of July By Audre Lorde

    1939 Words  | 4 Pages

    Cultural diversity is the hallmark of our society because of the our inherited genetic predisposition or what we learn as we grow up that predominantly shapes us and our differences as individuals. In that same way, we must be more aware of the things others say and do because we’re all different and we all should be able to accept the fact. When it comes to the Fourth of July, every person has his or her own memory during this special occasion. Audre Lorde took a trip during the summer to Washington, D.C., she obtained her own memory and meaning of independence. Lorde’s essay was written in response to her family’s trip to Washington D.C. the summer after her graduation from eighth grade. In it, she writes, “The waitress was white, and the counter was white, and the ice cream I never ate in Washington D.C. … was white and the white heat and the white pavement and the white stone monuments of my first Washington summer made me sick to my stomach for the whole rest of that trip…”(Lorde 257). Here,

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Fourth Of July

    949 Words  | 2 Pages

    In both “The Fourth of July” and “Black Men and Public Space” the narrators did one very important thing; they expressed how the encounter made the narrator feel. This is crucial because it almost allows the reader to share the feeling of helplessness that was felt. In “The Fourth of July”, Lorde explained how she truly did not understand why the family was treated differently. She tells of her parents’ fruitless effort to shield their children from the harsh realities of Jim Crow by planning out virtually the whole trip. The highlight of the story is when the narrator expresses both anger and confusion at the fact that her family was denied seated service at an ice cream parlor because they were black.

    Read More

  • Langston Hughes: Write, Fight, And Persevere

    1420 Words  | 3 Pages

    When reading the literature of Langston Hughes, I cant help but feeling energetically charged and inspired. Equality, freedom, empowerment, renaissance, justice and perseverance, are just a taste of the subject matter Hughes offers. He amplifies his voice and beliefs through his works which are firmly rooted in race pride and race feeling. Hughes committed himself both to writing and to writing mainly about African Americans. His early love for the “wonderful world of books” was sparked by loneliness and parental neglect. He would soon lose himself in the works of Walt Whitman, Paul Laurence, Carl Sandburg and other literary greats which would lead to enhancing his ever so growing style and grace of oeuvre. Such talent, character, and willpower could only come from one’s life experiences. Hughes had allot to owe to influences such as his grandmother and great uncle John Mercer Langston - a famous African American abolitionist. These influential individuals helped mold Hughes, and their affect shines brightly through his literary works of art.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of If He Hollers Let Him Go

    1504 Words  | 4 Pages

    When she first is confronted by the problem or race it hits her with a thump. Bob takes Alice to dinner where she states, “I don’t want feel like being refused” (55). Alice does what she can to avoid the face of racism. She lacks the integration within the different community, which gives her a one-path perspective. While going to the restaurant with Bob, he asks, “Scared because you haven’t got the white folks to cover you” (55)? She doesn’t have the protection of her friends or her parents to shy away from the truth of her being African American. She is hiding behind a mask because she’s passing as white. She’s accepting the assumption that she belongs to their culture. When she goes out, “with white folks the people think you’re white” (60). But, when she goes out with Bob there is nothing to hide behind. She’s confronted with the truth. Already feeling low about the restaurant, and getting pulled over by the cops, she uses her wealth to get out of the situation. She says, “I am a supervisor in the Los Angeles Welfare” (63). The power of her family shows that she be treated better by the cops and others in the

    Read More

  • Life and Work of Langston Hughes

    1965 Words  | 4 Pages

    James Mercer Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, on February 1, 1902, to James Nathaniel Hughes, a lawyer and businessman, and Carrie Mercer (Langston) Hughes, a teacher. The couple separated shortly thereafter. James Hughes was, by his son’s account, a cold man who hated blacks (and hated himself for being one), feeling that most of them deserved their ill fortune because of what he considered their ignorance and laziness. Langston’s youthful visits to him there, although sometimes for extended periods, were strained and painful. He attended Columbia University in 1921-22, and when he died he, left everything to three elderly women who had cared for him in his last illness, and Langston was not even mentioned in his will.

    Read More

  • Messages from Point of View in Langston Hughes’ I too

    1046 Words  | 3 Pages

    The point of view of being the oppressed African American is clearly evident in Langston Hughes’s writing. The author states, “I am the darker brother” (2.2) Here Hughes is clearly speaking on behalf of the African American race because during the early and mid 1900’s African American were oppressed because of their darker skin color. No where in the writing does Hughes mention the word racism, segregation, discrimination. No where in the poem are words like Civil Rights Movement or Harlem Renaissance read. Yet, the reader knows exactly what Langston Hughes is referring to. This is because the writing talks about a darker brother being told to eat somewhere else. This leads the reader to put the point of view of the poem into play. Because it talks of such a brother and because Hughes’s was a revolutionary poet who constantly wrote on the struggles of the black man, then the reader is able to easily interpret the poem as a cry for the African-American man. Langston Hughes’s writing as an African American then makes the narration very probable and realistic.

    Read More

  • Literary Analysis of Audre Lorde's Power

    1962 Words  | 4 Pages

    "Power" (1030) is a poem that has two different levels of meaning, literal and nonliteral. The first being a narrative poem literally about Clifford Glover, a ten-year-old African-American Queens boy who was shot by a Caucasian police officer that was acquitted by a jury. The second being the nonliteral, more poetic intent, Audre Lorde's reaction and feelings of fury and disgust over this incident. She entangles this racial injustice with her own furious and unsatisfied feelings in this piece. The first two stanzas are about Lorde's feelings and images she sees due to ...

    Read More

  • Langston Hughes

    1152 Words  | 3 Pages

    James Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. He was named after his father, but it was later shortened to just Langston Hughes. He was the only child of James and Carrie Hughes. His family was never happy so he was a lonely youth. The reasons for their unhappiness had as much to do with the color of their skin and the society into which they had been born as they did with their opposite personalities. They were victims of white attitudes and discriminatory laws. They moved to Oklahoma in the late 1890s. Although the institution of slavery was officially abolished racial discrimination and segregation persisted.

    Read More

  • Racial Inequality in 'Harlem' by Langston Hughes

    911 Words  | 2 Pages

    Langston Hughes was part of the Harlem Renaissance, but he always felt like an outsider due to his light brown skin tone and the races within his family. He felt a part of the black community, because he was surrounded by mostly black people his whole life. He had Native American, White American and African American mixed in his bloodline, but after the separation of his parents he lived with his African American grandmother. He had to deal with a lot growing up, with his family being torn apart and also being a biracial child.

    Read More

  • A Comparison of the Dream Deferred in A Raisin in the Sun and Harlem

    1401 Words  | 3 Pages

    Critical Essays on Langston Hughes.

    Read More

  • Racism In The Fourth Of July By Audre Lorde

    675 Words  | 2 Pages

    Families who have been victims of racism face many problems growing up in a country where skin tone matters. As Lorde’s sister was getting ready to go on a class trip, the teachers had pulled her aside to tell her she could not go,Lorde explains, “But the nuns had given her back her deposit in private, explaining to her that the class, all of whom were white, except

    Read More

More about The Fourth Of July, By Audre Lorde

Open Document