(Harlem) A Dream Deferred
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore —
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over —
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Helping Humpday celebrates Black History Month today with a sampling of the many “Dream” poems penned by African-American poet Langston Hughes. I chose to juxtapose one of the best known poems Harlem, full of pent up frustration, with the tender The Dream Keeper. You can read why in the Musings that continue below the Community Needs List, but first a word from our sponsor.
Welcome to the weekly edition of Helping Humpday, dedicated to Kossacks helping one another. HHday resides at the Street Prophets Coffee Hour, the intersection where politics and religion and history and ethical values conveniently meet and sometime collide.
Humpday — because we’re smack dab in the middle of the work week and getting over that hump sure looks sweet. But for some folks in this community, the humps they need to get over are far more daunting than looking forward to the weekend. That is where Helping comes in. Helping Humpday is specifically about generating community support for struggling Kossacks who find themselves facing an imminent financial emergency like keeping the lights on, avoiding eviction, getting to work, paying medical bills. Our goal is to publicize the Community Needs List as widely across the site as possible. Our motto is simple: many hands make light work.
Consider Donating Today. The folks on the Community Needs List are struggling, and some have been for months. They are working towards financial independence, but it takes time. Your small gift can help them find stability for another month in the face of a crisis. Even $3, or $5, or $10 helps. Consider donating if you can. Thank you so much.
Current Community Needs List
The weekly Community Needs List as of 2/8/18 with updates where I have them. Fundraisers who want a diary to be or stay on the list: PLEASE kosmail requests and donations received to njm5000 by Thursday evening to be included on the Friday morning updated list.
Living on the financial edge—need help? Check out the Helping Directories before your next emergency.
Housing Fundraisers
SNOOPYDAWG — Has a fundraiser diary: Need help: Car repairs and Woozle bills. PayPal is snoopydawg at earthlink dot net. Needs $3700 2,950 2900 2885 2865 2840 2740 2625 2605 to pay off these debts. Snoopy would love to meet this need with sales of photographs, so check out the link www.midlifeartistsunlimited.org/...and see this amazing talent.
Medical & Related Fundraisers
FREELANCE ESCAPOLOGIST— Long Words - A Cancer Diary Pt. 6 $2500 2100 17121645 1300 is still needed for medical and home moving expenses. Wed. Update diaryGoFundMe is here PayPal is churlygurl at gmail dot com.
MICHELEWIN—needs help with medical bills.$3900 2895. PayPal is michelewilson327 at gmail dot com
sreeizzle2012 A young man on the Autism spectrum who has worked his way through medical school now has an opportunity to speak at an international conference. He joined DKos in 2010 as a teenager! He now needs a little bit more help to reach his goal of airfare (covered) and some modest $150 for expenses. “Thank you so much for supporting my advocacy!” Diaries are here: www.dailykos.com/...
Goals met! WOOT!
jtg
Libraryguy
jan4insight
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Musings: Langston Hughes’ Montage of a Dream Deferred
So why did I juxtapose the two introductory poems — one a poem of gritty recognition of the psychological cost suffered from racial injustice and economic oppression and the other a determination to nurture and protect a dream? It is what Langston Hughes (1902-1967) sought to do himself in many cases.
As Hughes wrote in The Big Sea: An Autobiography in 1940:
I tried to write poems like the songs they sang on Seventh Street—gay songs, because you had to be gay or die; sad songs, because you couldn't help being sad sometimes. But gay or sad, you kept on living and you kept on going. Their songs—those of Seventh Street—had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going.
A Dream Deferred (now usually titled Harlem), along with The Negro Speaks of Rivers, is probably the Hughes poem that most of us read in high school. A Dream Deferred was one of the 91 poems that comprised the 75-page book-length suite of poems Montage of a Dream Deferred published in 1951. Hughes intended the work to be read as a single whole, but inevitably smaller poems were singled out. The theme of dreams held and dreams deferred, of spirits raised and spirits trodden upon, of a refusal to give up hope in the face of overwhelming odds, is interwoven with evocative glimpses of African American life in working class Harlem. These story poems, which take place within the span of one day, juxtapose the full life that folks create for themselves in the neighborhood with the oppression they face in the outside world.
Hughes was most interested in experimenting with form and rhythm. He envisioned Montage as a visual feast modeled on syncopated jazz: marked by conflicting changes, sudden nuances, sharp and impudent interjections, broken rhythms, and passages sometimes in the manner of a jam session.
Rather than the many-layered meanings favored by some modern poets, the themes of Hughes’ poems are generally overt. He explores contemporary 20th century African-American racial consciousness, black history, and the need for social change to resolve the injustices faced by the black community. Born in an educated if struggling middle class family and raised with a sense of racial pride and responsibility, Hughes longed to write for and about the working class. However, Hughes was also supremely conscious of his role as interpreter of the African-American experience to the wider American society. His readership, that small sliver of the public willing to buy poetry books or literary magazines, was overwhelmingly white and upper middle class.
Hughes rarely overtly eludes to the institution of slavery. However, his entire body of work addresses its long-term impact on the black community. The voices in the poems struggle to simply survive in Depression era America and later in the post-WWII era. In that struggle, the legacy of enslavement and life under oppressive Jim Crow is implicit. Particularly for Hughes is the devastating psychological affect upon those who have endured a conscious strategy of violence and intimidation by white society designed to ensure a cheap docile workforce, one so psychologically disempowered they cannot even imagine another existence. But endure and imagine the black community did, and Hughes celebrates that resilience even as he mourns the price paid.
What can the poetry of Langston Hughes say to all of us beyond the African American experience? Particularly here at Helping Humpday, there is a message for those who struggle financially and find themselves seeking the help of our generous DKos community. Hughes gives a voice to all those who are unseen and feeling powerless. His characters know the debilitating effect that crushing poverty and economic injustice has on the human psyche. Resist! he cries. Dream! he demands. Do not fall into the trap of hopelessness or depression, so common in the face of the grinding stress of navigating the demands of each day for those with inadequate or uncertain income.
I end with two more poems which again speak to the emotional cost when racial injustice and inequality strangles a person’s ability to pursue their dreams to the fullest. Both poems may speak to the author’s hopes for others; or is it advice? Do they actually offer hope, however measured? They are certainly a call to resist the forces that would crush one’s spirit and to prevail.
As I Grew Older
It was a long time ago.
I have almost forgotten my dream.
But it was there then,
In front of me,
Bright like a sun—
My dream.
And then the wall rose,
Rose slowly,
Slowly,
Between me and my dream.
Rose until it touched the sky—
The wall.
Shadow.
I am black.
I lie down in the shadow.
No longer the light of my dream before me,
Above me.
Only the thick wall.
Only the shadow.
My hands!
My dark hands!
Break through the wall!
Find my dream!
Help me to shatter this darkness,
To smash this night,
To break this shadow
Into a thousand lights of sun,
Into a thousand whirling dreams
Of sun!
.
Dreams
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
Poems are from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad (Knopf, 1994). The Dream Keeper was first published in 1932.
More Ways To Help
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SOCIAL MEDIA — Help Spread the Word
Help us get the word out! If helping financially isn’t the right option for you — or you want to do more — then be the link between need and fulfillment. If you are active on Social Media, go to the linked fund-raising pages on the Needs List and use the social media icons on the page to share it throughout your contacts on Facebook, Twitter, whatever platform you use. If you are active on DKOS, and it is appropriate for your members, republish this diary to your groups and tip, comment, rec so it stays on the sidebar as long as possible.
OUR PHILOSOPHY
What’s the philosophy behind the Community Needs List? I will let bfitzinAR, the original founder of Helping Humpday, speak for us:
Kossacks taking care of our own — helping by sharing/donating money or needed items, helping by sharing both donation site links and artisan/vendor site links and purchasing gifts for self or others via those links, helping by sharing knowledge and informational links, or helping by just sharing a hug or a cup of coffee as appropriate — is what community is all about.
We are community — clan, tribe, company, village, culture, and state. Community survives beyond the life of any single member and thrives by supporting and strengthening the life of each individual member — by helping each other, by sharing — all together.
Until such time as we get the government that we want and deserve, when there will be no need for fundraisers, there will always be some Kossacks who need the help and compassion of this kind, friendly, and generous community. Here at HHday we may highlight a particular Kossack’s story, share links to appeal diaries, share links to support services or other informational sites, spread the word, offer a shoulder to lean on.
Musical Interlude
Today’s musical interlude isn’t musical — it’s a scene from the movie The Great Debaters where literature professor and debate team supervisor Denzel Washington introduces his students to some voices of the Harlem Renaissance. Based on actual events, it is set in the 1930s at Wiley College, a tiny “Negro” college near Marshall, Texas.
Final Word
It really does take a Village, so a big thank-you to the entire Community Links and List Team. They monitor the lists, post several times a day across the DKOS site, help Kossacks with their individual diaries (and sometimes author them), spread the word, keep in touch with those on the list to offer emotional support and suggestions.
And as always, a tremendous THANK YOU to all our generous DONORS.
This is an open thread, so all topics welcome. Be kind to one another (I know you will be because that’s just the kind of folks you are), we’re all in this together. The blog is now open.