Monday, July 11, 2011

For "A Love Medicine" by Louise Erdrich and "Theme for English B" by Langston Hughes, what characteristics you use to match the two poems?

In my mind, I think that a dominant theme in both works is
the idea of exploring how the individual experience is one that needs to be revered in
all of its different forms.  Hughes' poem is quite open about this.  His experience is
different from his White counterparts.  This is something from which Hughes does not
run, but rather openly states.  In this light, Erdrich's work does much of the same. 
Her separated vignettes help to explore what it means to be Native American.  Both works
do not seek to make broad and totalizing statements about each cultural condition.  Yet,
both do seek to bring clearly the fact that what it means to be Native American and
African- American brings with it different components of reality and the construction of
one's identity is vastly different than the cultural norm.  This theme is a resounding
one in both and one worthy of further exploration.

No comments:

Post a Comment

How is Anne's goal of wanting "to go on living even after my death" fulfilled in Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl?I didn't get how it was...

I think you are right! I don't believe that many of the Jews who were herded into the concentration camps actually understood the eno...