

We Wear the Mask will appeal to scholars and students of African American literature and poetry, as well as those interested in one of the most celebrated and widely taught African American authors. Answer: In the poem 'We Wear the Mask,' Paul Laurence Dunbar voices his repressed anger and frustration toward American society. They situate Dunbar’s work in relation to the issues of advancement popular during the Reconstruction era and against the racial stereotypes proliferating in the early twentieth century while demonstrating its relevance to contemporary literary studies.

The speaker starts the poem with the lines, We wear the mask that grins and lies, (1). 1), he explains that not only he or a select few feel the effects of oppression it is the entire black community. By saying that we wear the mask (Dunbar l. Dunbar uses mask to symbolize the hidden feelings felt by the black majority as a whole. This poem relates the prejudice black people face against white people. In We Wear the Mask, Dunbar writes that we wear the mask that grins and lies (l. Employing an array of approaches to Dunbar’s poetic creations, these essays closely examine the self-motivated and dynamic effect of his use of dialect, language, rhetorical strategies, and narrative theory to promote racial uplift. In Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem, We Wear the Mask the speaker wears a mask to hide his internal suffering because he does not want the rest of the world to think he is weak. Willie Harrell has assembled a collection of essays on Dunbar’s work that builds on the research published over the last two decades. Born in Dayton, Ohio, Dunbar penned a large body of dialect poems, standard English poems, essays, novels and. Paul Laurence Dunbar 1872-1906 was the first African-American poet to garner national critical acclaim. His remarkably large body of work-he wrote eleven volumes of poetry, four short story collections, five novels, three librettos, and a play before his death at thirty-three-draws on the oral storytelling traditions of his ex-slave mother as well as his unconventional education at an all-white public school to explore the evolving identity of the black community and its place in post–Civil War America. We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries To thee from tortured souls arise. DuBois, and Frederick Douglass, who called him “the most promising colored man in America,” Dunbar intrigued readers and literary critics with his depictions of African Americans’ struggle to overcome a legacy of slavery and prejudice. In We Wear the Mask by Paul Dunbar, the poet talks about human sorrow due to racism and it is demonstrated through symbolism, allusions, and personification. An anthology of the best scholarship on the celebrated African American writerĪ prolific nineteenth-century author, Paul Laurence Dunbar was the first African American poet to gain national recognition.
