#culture

“After a while she got up from where she was and went over the little garden field entire. She was seeking confirmation of the voice and vision, and everywhere she found and acknowledged answers. A personal answer for all other creations except herself. She felt an answer seeking her, but where? When? How? Ch. 2”

“Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches. Ch. 2, p. 8”

“Well, Ah see Mouth”

“Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. Ch. 1, p. 9”

“Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry . It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It is beyond me. But in the main, I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall. Against a wall in company with other bags, white, red and yellow. Pour out the contents, and there is discovered a jumble of small things priceless and worthless. A first”

“I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul , nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to that sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal. Even in the helter”

“I am colored but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances except the fact that I am the only Negro in the United States whose grandfather on the mother's side was not an Indian chief.”

“Crazy for This Democracy”

“Gods always behave like the people who make them. Tell My Horse (1938), Ch. 15, p. 219”

“Ah done been in sorrow 's kitchen and Ah done licked out all de pots. Ah done died in grief and been buried in de bitter waters, and Ah done rose agin from de dead lak Lazarus. Lucy in Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934), Ch. 6, p. 13”

“The Black Man Speaks,”

“I was so sick last night I Didn't hardly know my mind. So sick last night I Didn't know my mind. I drunk some bad licker that Almost made me blind. "Morning After," (l. 1”

“Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken”

“Alabama Earth (at Booker Washington 's grave),”

“Song for a Dark Girl”

“The stars went out and so did the moon . The singer stopped playing and went to bed While the Weary Blues echoed through his head. He slept like a rock or a man that's dead. " The Weary Blues ", in The Weary Blues”

“The Negro Speaks of Rivers”

“The night is beautiful, So are the faces of my people. "My People", in the magazine Poems in Crisis (October 1923); reprinted in The Weary Blues”

“They'll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed”

“, in the magazine Survey Graphic (March 1925); reprinted in Selected Poems (1959); it is also often referred to as”