Resistance in Black Poetry and Children’s Literature
Audre Lorde — “Power” (1978)
Context
Power: Written in 1978 after the death of a 10-year-old Black boy, Clifford Glover, in New York (1973). This poem appears near the Black Arts period, when African Americans transformed voice into forms of poetry and art to capture resistance. The movement redefined Black as beautiful and powerful, turning language into rebellion and rejecting white literary norms.
Poem
The difference between poetry and rhetoric is being ready to kill yourself instead of your children. The poem opening contrasts poetry and rhetoric as truth creation versus empty speech, and suggests moral clarity. Rhetoric becomes empty political speech; police promise law and order while ignoring police brutality. To achieve resistance, self-sacrifice is needed rather than “destruction,” and the violent energy that killed the boy could live inside of her if she does not transform it. “thirsting for the wetness of his blood” isn’t literal — it shows the danger of being consumed by grief and rage.
Analysis
Type of resistance represented: Emotional and moral resistance through transformation.
- Representation: Lorde resists destruction caused by racism by transforming rage into poetry. Her line “The difference between poetry and rhetoric / is being ready to kill yourself instead of your children” shows that creation (poetry) becomes moral resistance against dehumanization.
- Dominant system: Racist justice systems and white moral numbness (“the policeman’s story sounded reasonable to her”).
- Complicit critique: White jurors and societal indifference.
- Form as resistance: The fragmented, confessional form mirrors emotional fracture — rejecting neat, polite language as a protest against sanitized depictions of Black pain.
- Problematic resistance: The imagined violence (“raping an 85-year-old white woman”) shows how rage can become destructive if not transformed — Lorde critiques that temptation.
Langston Hughes — “Negro” and Related Poems
Context
Negro: Made during the Harlem Renaissance, a period when the African American community in Harlem used art to express themselves and bring pride to people of color. This inspired the later Black Arts movement.
Poem
The poem itself is simple and concise, setting itself apart from white poems of the time that used more elaborate and complicated language. The poem’s repetition of the word black, and the similes “black as the night is black” and “Like the depths of my Africa,” transform color from inferiority into origin, power, and beauty. The word “depths” suggests deep history, not something shallow or empty. The use of repetition on “black” shows something to be proud of, rather than something weak. Throughout the poems Hughes lists roles forced upon Black people: “slave”, “worker”, “singer” and “victim.”
“Singer” and “Africa to Georgia”
Singer: “Africa to Georgia” talks about the Middle Passage in which Black people were trafficked into slavery. During that time Black people often sang songs to keep up morale and faith. These songs carried African culture and rhythm that enslavers tried to erase. This poem focuses on physical and cultural resistance. “I have been” is both an acknowledgment of pain and a refusal to be erased. By the time we hear “I am the Negro,” the statement carries the full history of labor, suffering, and creativity gathered into one powerful identity. Hughes turns what white society used to define as weakness (slavery, servitude) into proof of survival and resilience. The voice speaks as a collective rather than as an individual, being a voice for the people.
Langston Hughes — “Mother to Son”
Context
Written during the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes’s “Mother to Son” reflects the resilience of Black Americans facing racism and poverty.
Poem and Analysis
Through the mother’s staircase metaphor — “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair” — Hughes captures the struggle of generations who continue to climb despite hardship. Her voice represents resistance through perseverance: the act of enduring when the world tries to wear you down. When she tells her son, “Don’t you set down on the steps,” she refuses defeat and teaches that survival, faith, and determination are themselves forms of resistance. The poem resists despair by turning endurance into dignity, showing that to keep moving forward is to fight back.
Type of resistance
Type of resistance represented: Everyday perseverance as resistance.
- Representation: The mother’s continued climb despite “tacks” and “splinters” shows how survival is political resistance.
- Dominant system: Economic and racial hardship.
- Form as resistance: The use of Black dialect affirms cultural authenticity and oral tradition, resisting literary norms that valued white speech.
- Justified resistance: Perseverance and endurance — not violent revolt, but strength in persistence.
Langston Hughes — “I, Too” (1926)
Context
Langston Hughes’s “I, Too” (1926), written during the Harlem Renaissance, is a quiet but powerful act of resistance against the racism and segregation of Jim Crow America. The poem responds to Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing” by reclaiming the Black voice that Whitman’s vision of America left out.
Poem and Analysis
The speaker begins with “I, too, sing America,” asserting that he belongs to the nation’s identity even while being excluded: “They send me to eat in the kitchen / When company comes.” The kitchen symbolizes both segregation and invisibility, yet the speaker’s response — “But I laugh, / And eat well, / And grow strong” — transforms humiliation into growth and endurance. Through calm confidence rather than anger, Hughes shows resistance as inner strength and faith in the future: “Tomorrow, / I’ll be at the table.” By the end, “They’ll see how beautiful I am / And be ashamed,” shifting shame from the oppressed to the oppressor. The final line, “I, too, am America,” completes the transformation from silence to self-definition, insisting that Black identity is not outside of America — it is America itself.
I, Too, Sing America talks about the division and oppression that occurred in American society in the 1930s. The poem encourages us not to let anyone make us feel small. It inspires one to rise to the occasion and suggests that one day all will “sit down at the same table.” At the ending, the poem shows Hughes’s belief that his speaker resists racism by turning exclusion into empowerment, asserting that the very voices America tries to silence are the ones that most truthfully define it.
Whitman and Hughes
Big point: Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing” (1860) celebrates the “varied carols” of American workers — mechanics, carpenters, mothers, and others — but excludes Black voices, reflecting how 19th-century America defined its identity through white labor and freedom. Hughes’s “I, Too” (1926) answers that silence. His speaker begins, “I, too, sing America,” deliberately echoing Whitman’s rhythm and diction to insert himself — and by extension, Black Americans — into the same national song. By mirroring Whitman’s form but changing its perspective, Hughes reclaims the idea of America from one that ignores Black experience to one that includes it. Final: Hughes shows resistance through inclusion, using his right to belong as a form of protest. By declaring “I, too, sing America,” he resists racism not by rejecting the nation, but by demanding to be seen as part of it.
Other Works Mentioned
“Going to Meet the Man”
Going to Meet the Man: (Context not expanded in the original text.)
V for Vendetta
V for Vendetta: (Mentioned without expanded context.)
Maurice Sendak — “Where the Wild Things Are”
Context
Where the Wild Things Are: Originally, children were once considered mini-adults (16th century). Later, thinkers such as John Locke developed the idea that childhood experiences shape who people become. This shift influenced how children’s literature framed childhood emotion and imagination.
Story and Analysis
Story: The wolf suit that Max wears manifests his inner emotions. The mother calling him a “wild thing” is her labeling and attempting to contain emotions she does not understand.
Big point: The resistance in Where the Wild Things Are is subtle but powerful. It is not primarily political or social, but emotional and psychological. Max resists the way adults try to control or silence children’s emotions, especially anger. When his mother calls him a “WILD THING” and sends him to bed, she labels his energy as bad — something to be contained. But instead of accepting her judgment, Max uses imagination to reclaim that wildness. His journey “where the wild things are” becomes a form of resistance because he turns punishment into freedom. By taming the monsters with his calm command, “Be still!”, Max learns that his wild side isn’t something to fear — it’s something he can understand and control. That moment of mastery resists the adult world’s idea that children must be obedient to be “good.” When he returns home and finds “his supper waiting for him… and it was still hot,” it shows that resistance doesn’t destroy connection — it transforms it. Max’s rebellion leads to emotional growth, not punishment.
Type of resistance
Type of resistance represented: Emotional and imaginative resistance to authority and repression.
- Representation: Max resists his mother’s control and society’s rules by escaping into his imagination and becoming “king of all wild things.”
- Dominant system: Adult authority, discipline, and emotional repression.
- Complicit critique: Adults who demand obedience and deny emotional complexity in children.
- Form as resistance: The picture book’s structure — where images expand and words shrink — visually resists adult control, letting imagination dominate.
- Justified resistance: Emotional expression, creativity, self-definition.
- Problematic resistance: Total rejection of home/authority leads to isolation; true resistance must balance freedom with love.
Summary Comparisons
The works collected here — Audre Lorde’s “Power”, Langston Hughes’s poems (“Negro”, “Mother to Son”, “I, Too”), and Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are — illustrate different forms of resistance:
- Emotional and moral transformation (Lorde): turning rage into creative, reparative acts.
- Inclusion and dignity (Hughes): reclaiming belonging and rewriting national identity.
- Everyday perseverance (Hughes): endurance as political action.
- Imaginative rebellion (Sendak): asserting childhood emotional life against adult repression.
Each author or creator reinterprets dominant narratives and systems, showing that resistance can take many forms: poetic creation, sustained perseverance, imaginative autonomy, and the demand to be recognized.