Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons^™

Strategies Of Liberation And Empowerment In Maya Angelou's And Audre Lorde's Black Feminist Literature, Lydia Jernigan

Student Works

The progression of second-wave feminism in America saw Black feminist writers such as Maya Angelou and Audre Lorde utilizing literature, and notably poetry, to resist against their oppression, due not only to their gender but also to their race. Lorde states in her 1977 essay, “Poetry is Not a Luxury,” that poetry, for women, “is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.” One of the aims of Lorde’s explicitly political poems—as …

I, Discomfort Woman: A Fugue In F Minor, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Poetry Beyond The Page: A Case For Spoken Word Poetry In Florida's Secondary Classrooms, Sarah Matherly

Senior Honors Theses

Florida’s B.E.S.T. Standards, Florida’s most recent K-12 educational standards to promote literacy, lack the rising art of Spoken Word Poetry. However, Florida’s Department of Education should integrate Spoken Word into Florida’s Secondary curriculum. Spoken Word Poetry, by its definition, holds researched benefits that align with the B.E.S.T. Standard’s poetry recommendations and literacy-centered goals. In light of such benefits, Florida’s Department of Education should consider various Spoken Word poets and poems to include in Florida’s Secondary Curriculum, as well as explore the resources and integration methods included in this thesis for both teachers and students.

Introduction To Creative Writing, Sheila Y. Maldonado

Open Educational Resources

English 220 Introduction to Creative Writing - readings and exercises in fiction, drama, and poetry

"Free Indirect Suicide: An Unfinished Fugue In H Minor", Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

In this lyric essay/work of creative nonfiction (listed among “Notable Essays & Literary Nonfiction” in Best American Essays 2020), Seo-Young Chu uses poetry, autotheory, and creative nonfiction to explore the generational trauma/postmemory han she inherited from her parents and the importance of destigmatizing mental illness through dialogue.

African Poetry Libraries-A Global Collaboration, Lorna M. Dawes, Charlene Maxey-Harris

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

In 2014, the African Poetry Book Fund (APBF) and the University of Nebraska (UNL)literary magazine-thePrairie Schooner established African Poetry Libraries in five countries; Ghana, Kenya,Uganda, Gambia and Botswana. The purpose of these libraries wasto support the creativity of aspiring and establishedpoets in their local communities. The University of Nebraska Libraries was asked toserve as consultants on the initiative by working with local volunteers to set up thelibraries and provideongoing assistance and advice to the new libraries during thefirst three years of their inception. The goal of the librariesis to support thelocal community of poets through access to contemporary poetry, and …

Angel Island Poetry: Reading And Writing Cultures, Adam Kotlarczyk

Understanding Poetry

Object of a darker chapter in American history, the Angel Island Poems (as they have become known) are a recently discovered body of over 135 poems, written primarily in Chinese. These were literally carved into the walls at the Angel Island Immigration Station, where Chinese immigrants were detained, sometimes indefinitely, between approximately 1910-1940.

This lesson demonstrates how history and culture can be integral to our understanding of poetry, even poetry that is deeply reflective and personal in nature; by requiring students to model and produce their own poetry, it also makes evident that writing poetry is a creative instinct and …

'Grung Tell Me Wud': An Introduction To Karl, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Olive Senior informs us in 'The Poem as Gardening, the Story as Su-Su: Finding a Literary Voice' that Jamaican elders believe the ground is the place where ancestral wisdom is located and they will explain and validate their warning or advice by saying, 'Grung tell me wud' (36). Jamaican linguist/literary critic/poet/and novelist Velma Pollard has put her ear to the ground of Jamaica and shared many important words of ancestral wisdom with us. This was a natural development for the talented girlchild born into an artistic family in Woodside, Jamaica, a rural community rich in folk traditions: her father was …

A Conversation With Velma Pollard, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Noted poet, novelist, linguist, and educator, Velma Pollard was Visiting Professor of English at the University of Richmond in Richmond, Virginia, during the fall semester of 2001 when I conducted the following interview. John Martin, my graduate assistant at the time, assisted me in videotaping and transcribing our conversation, which took place in her cottage at the University on December 3, 2001.

The Zea Mexican Dairy: 7 Sept 1926 - 7 Sept 1986. By Kamau Brathwaite (Book Review), Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

I may be hard put to classify the latest work of noted poet, historian, literary critic, linguist, and Africanist Kamau (Eddie) Brathwaite, but I have no problem describing it - compelling, riveting, unforgettable! Begun when Brathwaite received the devastating news that his wife Doris (his Zea Mexican) was dying of cancer, it is a paean to her, a record of his efforts to deal with her dying, death, and absence, an account of their relationship, and an autobiographical confessional. The Zea Mexican Diary includes diary entries, letters, memorates, an epigraph, expressions of sympathy, confessions, autobiographical narrative, poems - but whatever …