What Does The Slave Mother Mean

Unlike many mathematicians, I live in an irrational world. Living in a world where people shame me for the color of my skin, how big my hair is, and by the way I talk. I am not like ever other person so do not dare to compare me. African-American culture, also known as Black-American culture, refers to the cultural contributions of African Americans to the culture of the United States. Slavery was practiced throughout the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries, and African slaves helped build the new nation into an economic powerhouse through the production of lucrative crops such as tobacco and cotton (History.com). A list of wonderful poets was given and the two who caught eye was Frances E.W. Harper and George Moses Horton.
Frances
In “The Slave Mother”, Harper use human emotions of hope, “pains” of labor and celebrates her own womanhood, motherhood, and love to convey how people cope with traumatic events. The phrase “He is not hers” is repeated three time to emphasize the point that although the mother’s “blood is coursing through his veins”, the boy does not legally belong to the mother, but to the slave master. The word “liberty” has been used six times in the “On Liberty and Slavery” by George Moses Horton. The aim of repeating this word is to show the extent to which slavery does not grant human being the sense of freedom that greatly desired. He also shows how he longs for liberty and the end of slavery. Liberty seems to be a craving for all slaves and something that is inaccessible to
The use of imagery is another aspect that both poems have in common. In the first poem, Harper makes use of harsh imagery to emphasize in the emotional loss of the slave mother instead of her physical loss of her son. In stanza one, Harper used words like “wildly” and “shriek” which depict an animalistic fight for her son. There is a strong bond between a mother and a son and slavery has been shown to break this bond. The reader can clearly sense the pain and agony of the slave mother. Despite having a blood bond with her son, the son is no longer hers. She constantly lives with the fear that he would be sold as a slave in a different plantation. In the second poem, Horton presents a typical image of a slave. The persona is a slave who describes the agonizing life that one must live as a slave due to lack of freedom. Through the words used, the readers can clearly envision the desire and longing that a slave has for