Black Poetry Tuesdays (July 25, 2023 Edition): "Karenge ya Marenge” by Countee Cullen

The week’s poem is a piece from Countee Cullen. Cullen was a queer poet, novelist, children's writer, playwright, and one of the prominent voices of the Harlem Renaissance. Countee’s work was heavily influenced by the concept of Négritude, a framework of critique and literary theory developed mainly by Black and African American intellectuals, writers, and politicians during the 1930s. It aimed at raising and cultivating a renewal of "Black consciousness,” a (re)discovery of Black values and awareness of the world and its view of Black bodies. This showed in the focus of his work, which was at the intersections of Blackness, racism, trauma, sexuality, finding identity, and self-expression.

The following piece is called “Karenga ya Marenge.” In this piece, Cullen explores language, its applications, and how racism, colorism, and anti-Blackness play a part in how Western culture absorbs words from melanated people, especially when seeking support and community in the face of oppression. It’s an interesting critique of Western culture’s adherence to the “proper” use of language and its response to those who are seen as less than, a struggle that we are still pushing through in 2023.

Karenge ya Marenge

Wherein are words sublime or noble? What

Invests one speech with haloed eminence,

Makes it the sesame for all doors shut,

Yet in its like sees but impertinence?

Is it the hue? Is it the cast of eye,

The curve of lip or Asiatic breath,

Which mark a lesser place for Gandhi’s cry

Than “Give me liberty or give me death!”

Is Indian speech so quaint, so weak, so rude,

So like its land enslaved, denied, and crude,

That men who claim they fight for liberty

Can hear this battle-shout impassively,

Yet to their arms with high resolve have sprung

At those same words cried in the English tongue?

You can learn more about Countee Cullen here.