For My People (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Margaret Walker
- First Published: 1937
- Type of Work: Poem
- Genres: Free verse, Poetry
- Subjects: African Americans, History, United States or Americans, Racism, Slavery or slaves, Poverty or poor people
“For My People” was mostly written in a fifteen-minute burst of brilliant inspiration. Its principal tactics are inventory—a concretization of the feeling—and repetition, a concentration and intensification of the poem's passion and political resolve, especially tuned for oral presentation.
Stanza I begins the chronology of African American history with the first of six incantations of “for my people,” recalling the songs of an enslaved race—of sadness, of verbal play, of grief, of the rare times of joy, and of supplication and submission to whatever God has...
[The entire page is 656 words long]
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