Luis
Language and literature
As the early 1900s progressed, the m0vement ignited literary and intellectual explosion due to creative expression being the only avenue from active racism and difficult economic crisis. Remarkable writers like Langston Hughes (to the left), left their mark in American literature by creating outstanding works, for example, Hughes' The Negro Speaks Rivers and Dreams Deferred. His exposure to early poetry and his innovation of "jazz poetry" also made him a huge part of the revolution of American culture.
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Zora Neale Hurston was another amazing mind of the Harlem Renaissance, bringing her author and anthropology skills to life. In 1918, Hurston began undergraduate studies at Howard University, where she became one of the earliest initiates of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority and co-founded The Hilltop, the University's student newspaper. As an adult, she wrote four novels and more than 50 published short stories, plays, and essays, she is best known for her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.
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Harlem Renaissance Slang
- First thing smoking: a train (I'm through with this town. I mean to grab the first thing smoking.
- Male sex: Georgia jumping-root, hambone, honey-stick; dat thing (sex of either sex)
- Sex: scooter-pooking, jelly, ground rations, under rations, poontang, getting my hambone boiled, knocking the pad, balling (having sex); "Baby, how is the drawbridge? Any boats passing?" "What's on the rail for the lizard?" (both suggestions for having sex [Hurston]); hootchie-pap, stuff (can also mean excretion); swap spit (kiss).
- C.P.T.: colord people's time; i.e., late
- Women: broad, frail eel (a pretty girl); coal scuttle blonde (a black woman); Sheba (a very attractive woman); pe-ola (on extremely light-skinned black woman); pig meat (a young girl) I'm cracking but I'm facking: I'm wisecracking but I'm telling the truth
- Thousand on the plate: beans
I shot him lightly and he died politely: to outdo someone, hands down
Gut-bucket: low dive, type of music or expression from same - Terms of endearment: big sugar, small sugar, mama (girlfriend or wife); papa, daddy (husband or lover)
Hell: Ginny Gall ("Way off in Ginny Gall/where you have to eat cow cunt, skin and all." [Hurston]); West Hell (a suburb worse than Hell); Beluthahatchie (next station beyond Hell); Diddy-Wah-Diddy (another suburb of Hell, where folks in Hell go for good jooking, barbecues, fish fries.
As seen above, slang was used throughout the Harlem Renaissance quite often. slag was something that was also incorporated in the transformation of a new style of literature.