Beauford and Baldwin

When Beauford Delaney made this pastel portrait of writer James Baldwin in 1963, his protégé was at the height of his powers. Baldwin's controversial novel, Another Country, was a best-seller, and he had recently published his important collection of essays, The Fire Next Time. Delaney had once served as a surrogate "father in art" to the teenaged Baldwin in New York. Baldwin, in turn, was inspired by the older artist's ideas, devotion to his work, and struggles with the challenges of homosexuality, mental illness, and alcoholism.

Although Delaney loved Baldwin, his portrait is not about nostalgic affection. Heated and confrontational, its harsh colors roughly applied, the pastel hints at the inner anxieties that would ultimately land Delaney in a psychiatric hospital. His pastel glows with the vibrant, Van Gogh–inspired yellow the artist often used after he moved to Paris in the 1950s. One of perhaps a dozen portraits that Delaney made of Baldwin over thirty years, it is both a likeness based on memory and a study of light.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

The Negro Speaks of Rivers
by Langston Hughes
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I've known rivers:

I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

flow of human blood in human veins.



My soul has grown deep like the rivers.



I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln

went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy

bosom turn all golden in the sunset.



I've known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.



My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

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What is ethnicity?

What is the purpose of this lesson? To be able to answer the following questions...
• What is ethnicity?
• Does everyone have ethnicity?
What do I need to do?
• Read some information on ethnicity
• Answer questions about your own ethnicity
What are the lesson steps?
Please follow along with the lesson, completing the steps as you come across them.


Welcome to Ethnic American Literature 1! Please begin by reading the following definition:

Ethnicity: Refers to membership of in a culturally- and geographically defined group that share cultural practices including but not limited to holidays, food, language, and customs, or religion. Italian, Kurdish, and Bantu are examples of ethnic groups. People of the same race can be of different ethnicities. For example, Asians can be Japanese, Korean, Thai, or many other ethnicities.
CLICK HERE for an interesting website.
Do you think you can determine what race people are classified as just by looking at them? Things aren't always what they seem! No matter what a person looks like, his or her heritage can include any number of things.
As you know, in this class we will be reading poems, short stories, and novels by authors of several different ethnic groups. The majority of these works will deal with questions of how ethnicity affects the authors' and their characters' lives. How does your ethnicity affect your life?

ASSIGNMENT
In the free response box, answer the following questions to the best of your knowledge, and with complete sentences. You may need to do some research by talking to family members in order to answer these questions. You may find out something new about yourself!
1. What do you know about your family prior to their arrival in the United States? From what countries did they emigrate? To the best of your knowledge, what family members came to the United States, and which members of this first generation are still alive? If you are a Native American, what do you know about your family's tribe?
2. What generation American are you? (E.g., if your great-grandparents were first generation Americans, meaning that they are the ones who first came or were brought to the United States, then your grandparents were the second generation, your parents were the third generation, and you are the fourth generation.)
3. What elements of your daily life are directly related to this ethnicity?
4. What aspects of your ethnicity, if any, seem to have been lost in your family as they assimilated into American society? To what degree would you say that you and your family members have assimilated, and why?