Journal: McKay’s “America”
Please read Claude McKay’s “America” and respond to ONE of the following questions or prompts:
Does it make you feel and/or what does it make you think about?
What questions do you have or what’s confusing to you about the piece?
Does this relate to your own experience? If so, how?
How does figurative language or other poetic elements (i.e. diction, rhyme, meter, sonnet form) affect your reading of the poem?
What is one possible theme for this piece? Explain with support from the piece.
Do you find this piece effective? Why or why not?
In order to earn full credit, your response should be at least 150 words and meet the criteria set out in your syllabus.Make sure that when you refer to specific lines, use quotes and line numbers in parenthesis to set evidence from the text apart from your own voice.
3= Your writing shows a mastery of thematic issues and/or you have expressed a number of insights or connections that demonstrate an excellent effort to make meaning. You have also used properly cited evidence from the text to support your point, and you responded to a classmate.
America
BY CLAUDE MCKAY
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate,
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.
