Identity and Race in Victor Cruz's "African Things"
This paper analyzes "African Things" by Victor Hernández Cruz, focusing on the poem's central theme of racial and cultural identity. The analysis examines how Cruz uses jazz-like repetition, imagery of African spirits, and references to family and place to articulate the tension between African ancestry and Puerto Rican upbringing. The paper also considers the poem's critique of Western modernity and its failure to acknowledge or affirm the poet's heritage. Through close reading of key lines, the essay argues that Cruz's central question concerns how African identity survives and persists across diasporic displacement.
- Overview of the Poem: Jazz tone, racial themes, and identity quest
- Theme of Identity and Race: African spirits, Puerto Rico, and ancestry questioned
- Symbolism and Key Imagery: Darkness, family, and diasporic displacement symbols
- Conclusion: Rejection of Western narratives for ancestral African identity
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper stays closely tethered to the text, using direct quotation to ground each interpretive claim rather than drifting into unsupported generalization.
- It identifies a specific, coherent central question in the poem — how African identity persists through diasporic displacement — and organizes the analysis around that question.
- The discussion of the "wonder man" figure as a critique of Western modernity adds a layer of cultural criticism that elevates the reading beyond simple theme identification.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates close reading: it selects a representative passage, unpacks its individual components (family, heritage, ancestry, location, darkness), and shows how each element contributes to the poem's larger thematic argument. This systematic unpacking of a single quotation is a model technique for literary analysis essays at the undergraduate level.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens by identifying the poem's formal qualities (jazz-like refrain) and connecting them to its central theme (identity). It then supports that theme with a close reading of a key passage, cataloguing its symbolic elements. The final paragraph synthesizes the analysis into a clear thematic statement about the poet's rejection of Western historical narratives in favor of ancestral, African ones. The structure is concise and moves efficiently from observation to evidence to interpretation.
Overview of the Poem
"African Things" by Victor Hernández Cruz repeats certain refrains, altered slightly, with the final rendering being "dance and tell me black african things." The poem has a smooth jazz feel to it, which fits its central theme: identity. The poet places a great deal of emphasis on race — black Africa meets Indio in Puerto Rico with Latin influences from Europe — and all of it is mixed together in this poem. Cruz is trying to establish a sense of place and identity as he looks to the heavens and appeals to the "wonder man" who "rides his space ship." There is a sense that this figure represents the Western modern man who seems to know all things technological but cannot say anything — or will not say anything — about the racial identity the poet wants to understand.
Theme of Identity and Race
The theme of African diasporic identity can be seen clearly in the following lines: "African spirits / dance & sing in my mother's house. In my cousin's house. / black as night can be / what was Puerto Rican all about." Here, the poet references family (mother and cousin), heritage (house), ancestry (spirits), location (Puerto Rico), and darkness (black as night). Each element contributes to both the race question and the confusion surrounding identity.
Conclusion
This poem is ultimately about identity — about asking who one is from a racial perspective, even when raised in another place and given a Latin-sounding name. That circumstance does not settle the question for the poet. Cruz seeks to hear African spirits, not Western or white voices telling him about their actions and discoveries, or defining who he is based on their histories rather than his own family's. The poem stands as a refusal of imposed identity and an appeal to something older, deeper, and ancestral.
Works Cited
Cruz, Victor. "African Things."
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