Mid-term test on the subject “TO’MA” Faculty of Philology and Language Teaching (English), 2022

Black Pride

The poems of Langston Hughes evoke ideas of Black pride. He is one of the most influential spokespeople for his race and exudes a strong sense of racial pride. He constantly exhorts his followers to take pride in who they are. His poems "I Too," "Negro," "My People," "Color," and "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" among others promote Black pride in addition to other issues. Black people's lofty aspirations and sentimental memories of their homeland are expressed in Hughes' poetry. He employs straightforward and well-known terminology, concepts, and language to his people.

Through his poetry, Langston Hughes constantly urges his people to love themselves no matter how others treat or think of them. I am writing poetry. He describes the heroic role of black people and their endless struggle against hatred and oppression. His poetry inspires his people with a sense of pride for black people, making the case that black people have contributed to civilization throughout history. Hughes' famous poem, "Negroes Speak Rivers," traces the connection between African Americans and the rich culture and history of blacks. In the poem, he uses the current to build pride in the African American community.

3. 
   Erskine Caldwell's novel Tobacco Road, published in 1932, was a highly controversial story of violence and sex among poor rural Americans in the American South. This is the story of Georgia sharecropper Jeter Lester and his family, trapped in the harsh economic conditions of the Great Depression and their own limited intelligence and destructive sexuality. Its tragic ending is largely determined by the characters' inability to change their lives. Caldwell's skillful use of dialect and austere style has made him one of the finest examples of literary naturalism in contemporary American literature. The novel was adapted into a successful play in 1933.
   

Tobacco Road is set in rural Georgia, a few miles from Augusta, during the worst of the Great Depression. It depicts Lester's family, poor white sharecroppers, as part of many small Southern cotton farmers made redundant by the industrialization of production and migration to cities. The protagonist of the novel, Jeter Lester, is an ignorant and sinful man who is saved by his love of the land and his belief in its fertility and promise.

As a comedy, Tobacco Road is a modest failure. A tragic failure. And yet, eighty years after his publication, Erskine's Caldwell novel remains a dizzying and salacious delight. It doesn't go away as much as a freak on his show or a car crash. No one knew what to think of Caldwell in 1932, and although no one talks about him much today, his legacy lives on. He is the pioneer of what might be called the Fallen School of American Fiction. Descendants include writers such as William S. Burroughs, Harry Cruises, Catherine Dunn, and Barry Gifford. Tobacco Road is vulgar, twisted, and irreducibly American.