post # 6

            The Black Arts Movement improved in reinventing a consciousness in contemporary African American art forms after the Civil Right’s Movement that included influences in challenging mainstream societal norms and pride in African American culture.

The impression of Alice Walker’s writing presents the argument that the artistic quality of African American women under a repressive slave society was often overlooked. As exploited women or as Alice Walker describes them, “The mule of society” the women under slavery were had enforced upon them abusive conditions of subservience including having to endure manual labor, rapes, laws restricting their freedom and prohibition from education. Despite the repressive conditions in society their vigilance in enduring these extreme conditions they carried out responsibilities to tend to their children and help provide for their families. The quality of their works show how the under these restrictions women were still able to produce various forms of talent and art with their stories, singing, patterns in quilts, poems and impressive garden arrangements.

Writing of the black Arts Movement included short works ”Black Art” by Le Roi Jones and Revolution!. The poem Revolution! Seems to express a motivation to show the consequential change of a type of communal collective sacrifice of solidarity with it’s frequent usage of the words, we and our, throughout the poem. Perhaps is it a revolution against the social order of that community in fighting any threats of answering one with a strong threatening collective response from the description of all the language that refer to fighting and sacrifice.

Black Arts by Le Roi Jones also has strong language. In my opinion it also relates with revolution but in a tone closer towards the changing art forms of poetry. The theme of the poem reflects the experience of the urban community in perhaps Harlem. A strong impression is noticed from the openness of the language of racism, societal ills and violence. In its closing section a racial message promoting black culture in poetry brings what I feel relates the tone of the strong language combined with the hardcore experience to express a form of strong poetry developed from the circumstances of that community.