February 16, 2011 Period 3

Read, annotate, analyze.  Write a one paragraph, typed, double-spaced response to this poem:

To the Diaspora by Gwendolyn Brooks

you did not know you were Afrika

you did not know you were Afrika

When you set out for Afrika
you did not know you were going.
Because
you did not know you were Afrika.
You did not know the Black continent
that had to be reached
was you.

I could not have told you then that some sun
would come,
somewhere over the road,
would come evoking the diamonds
of you, the Black continent--
somewhere over the road.
You would not have believed my mouth.

When I told you, meeting you somewhere close
to the heat and youth of the road,
liking my loyalty, liking belief,
you smiled and you thanked me but very little believed me.

Here is some sun. Some.
Now off into the places rough to reach.
Though dry, though drowsy, all unwillingly a-wobble,
into the dissonant and dangerous crescendo.
Your work, that was done, to be done to be done to be done.

Diaspora: Jews living outside Israel.

• the dispersion of the Jews beyond Israel.

• the dispersion of any people from their original homeland : the diaspora of boat people from Asia.

• the people so dispersed : the Ukrainian diaspora flocked back to Kiev.