Minorities and Poetry
...ake happiness in the poem "We wear the Mask". The African American people in this poem wear a mask that grins and lies. The grins on their faces are hiding the pain they have inside. The African Americans in this poem would only allow people to see them smiling and not let them know that they are actually crying and sighing. "With torn and bleeding hearts we smile" "Nay let them only see us, while we wear the mask"(802). This particular exert from the poem shows that they wear the mask only to hide their true feelings from the world. Because they are already a minority if the world knew that they could not handle what they go through in life they would get the stereotype of being weaker than they are already labeled. This diminishes their actual position in the world by allows other people who seem to have "authority" take away their feelings and paste fake ones upon their faces, to avoid confrontation, and the question "why?". These people need to act forcefully, and stand up for their rights as people, and press forward to the equality of humans that is not based on race, gender, ethnic group, or religious background. This is exactly what the narrator in Clifton's poem "Homage to my Hips" does. The narrator in the poem "Homage to my Hips" by Clifton does not allow people to hold her back from anything. Although she is a woman she knows she has the freedom to do whatever she pleases, and go wherever she wants to go. In the poem she explains, that she has big hips that need their space to move around. They do not fit in small places, and are not enslaved, but they are free. "They go where they want to go they do what they want to do these hips are mighty hips"(839). She pushes herself toward equal rights. She is assertive and forcefully defends her opinion that she can do what she wishes with her life. "These hips are magic hips. I have known them to put a spell on a man, and spin him like a top." this passage in the poem shows that she may even feel that she has authority over men because she has the ability to make them do things for her because of her body. She is not enslaved by a man because the world often feels that men have authority over women. Women are c...