Examining racial identity and anger in Lucille Clifton's poetry

Lucille Clifton Poetry Response

Interestingly, the author of this response interprets Lucille Clifton's poetry as being heavily influenced by both her gender and her ethnicity. Many authors are so influenced, particularly in groups where the identification is with a marginalized group, such as the female gender or a minority ethnic group. This author also describes this association as being "sometimes stereotypically" African-American in tone. Although a person might react negatively to such a description, their meaning is understood. Sometimes when a person is writing with the intention of expressing themselves as an avatar for an entire minority community, the attempt to portray a singular African-American identity can come off as stereotypical. Although this point is a valid one, it feels like a thrown away commentary in that it is only provided a single sentence and then moved past without specific evidence in Clifton's work to support the assertion.

In this analysis, the author gives particular attention to Clifton's poem "Jasper Texas 1998." The poem deals with a hate crime perpetrated against a black man by two whites. It is a heinous crime and the poet uses it to exemplify an inner hatred for all white men, according to the views of this analysis's author. From there, the author seems to get more personally involved in the analysis, explaining that as a white male, he does not feel the responsibility or culpability that Clifton seems to be demanding from her words. It becomes rather a scathing indictment of this type of writing, where the oppressed individual in speaking for the rest of their ethnicity takes a stand against the majority population. It is an understandable perspective, but at the same time it perhaps leaves the realm of scholarly discourse and becomes more about personal emotion towards a subject.