The speaker starts the poem with the lines, We wear the mask that grins and lies, (1). Both of Paul Laurence DunbarвЂ™s parents were slaves, and he was born less than a decade after slavery became illegal. This poem relates the prejudice black people face against white people. We Wear the Mask Upon the first reading of We Wear the Mask, one is immediately convinced of the universality with which Paul Laurence Dunbar speaks of. Dunbars Writing Took out a loan to publish first book of poetry Impressed critics very popular Wrote. We Wear the Mask will appeal to scholars and students of African American literature and poetry, as well as those interested in one of the most celebrated and widely taught African American authors. In Paul Laurence DunbarвЂ™s poem, We Wear the Mask the speaker wears a mask to hide his internal suffering because he does not want the rest of the world to think he is weak. They situate DunbarвЂ™s work in relation to the issues of advancement popular during the Reconstruction era and against the racial stereotypes proliferating in the early twentieth century while demonstrating its relevance to contemporary literary studies. The speaker is comparing a mask to they way he is ashamed and has to hide who he is. Employing an array of approaches to DunbarвЂ™s poetic creations, these essays closely examine the self-motivated and dynamic effect of his use of dialect, language, rhetorical strategies, and narrative theory to promote racial uplift. We wear the mask that grins and lies, Metaphor: is a figure of speech in which one thing is spoken of as though it were something else. Willie Harrell has assembled a collection of essays on DunbarвЂ™s work that builds on the research published over the last two decades. Read Paul Laurence Dunbar poem:We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes. His remarkably large body of work-he wrote eleven volumes of poetry, four short story collections, five novels, three librettos, and a play before his death at thirty-three-draws on the oral storytelling traditions of his ex-slave mother as well as his unconventional education at an all-white public school to explore the evolving identity of the black community and its place in postвЂ“Civil War America. We Wear The Mask Poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar. DuBois, and Frederick Douglass, who called him вЂњthe most promising colored man in America,вЂќ Dunbar intrigued readers and literary critics with his depictions of African AmericansвЂ™ struggle to overcome a legacy of slavery and prejudice. An anthology of the best scholarship on the celebrated African American writerДЄ prolific nineteenth-century author, Paul Laurence Dunbar was the first African American poet to gain national recognition.

Paul laurence dunbar we wear the mask