Arianna W. answered • 06/17/23
Effective English Tutor Specializing in Writing and Reading Skills
In the poem "Mother to Son", the narrator is expressing to the son a lesson of generational hardship something that is incredibly relevant to the African American experience of oppression. The history of slavery in the United States created and continues to create a need for parents to explain the nations prejudice. In the poem she does that Langston Hughes does that through the narrator expressing how hard life has been. The Harlem Renaissance was a moment in African American history after the civil war when black people's freedom of creative expression wasn't so subjugated. They were able to create communities and a unique style in all different kinds of art. During legal slavery, expression was incredibly limited because it creates community and collective identity which needed to be forced out of black life. For a slave owner, limiting anything and everything your slave could do helped reinforce the inhumane order and structure of the relationship. Identity is also explored through the poem through the use of language. Even though blackness isn't specifically mentioned, it is explored through the language which is understood to be uniquely African American. Language like "Ain't" and "I'se", which at the time was understood as the way that a lot of black people talk.
