I Have a Dream...

Some groups of Americans have different sorts of American Dreams. During the Harlem Renaissance, African-Americans showed their desires and thought-motifs in an explosion of art, music, and literature. They have so much to teach me about pursuing the American dream...

Zora Neale Hurston, for example, demonstrates how to be an active (instead of a passive) seeker. She really embodies the Harlem theme of black pride. "I dance wildly inside myself; I yell within, I whoop... He is so pale with his whiteness then and I am so colored" (1517-8). It takes a certain spirit to pursue the American Dream, and that spirit has to do with being satisfied not exactly with what you have, but with who you are. Perhaps one of the biggest difficulties is that the American Dream draws our gaze outwards with all its glitter, but Zora shows that glitter to be pale in comparison to inner color (be that color purple or red or whatever).

Langston Hughes presents a view of life which "ain't been no crystal stair" (1893). His poems are laced with protest: at a life of inequality, hardship, and racism. "I'll sit at the table... I, too, am America" (1894). His poetry strives to become more, to acquire more, to be seen as a somebody. He wants to join the majority of America in sitting at the table, and of chasing the mirage in the desert.

So who displays a more successful Dream -- Zora or Hughes?