We Wear the Mask

By the time “We Wear the Mask” was published, Paul Laurence Dunbar was a well-known literary figure, and his work continues to spark debate in literary and academic circles. The poem was published in what seems to be a few of his collections, first in Majors and Minors and next in Lyrics of Lowly Life, both of which explored language and dialect in ways that made him a popular and polarizing writer. Dunbar often experimented with dialectic poetry, and he was known for writing in the African American dialect of the time. He was also criticized for participating in and benefiting from negative African American stereotypes because of his work with dialectic poetry, and it didn’t help that his work was especially famous with white audiences. His short story collection In Old Plantation Days (1903) also struck critics as disingenuous and harmful due to stereotypical depictions of Black people.

Still, as “We Wear the Mask” and other poems show, Dunbar’s ability to explore language through a cultural lens is what made this poem particularly stand out. Unlike in his dialect poem “Signs of the Times,” for example, his specific choice of using a classical form of poetry, the rondeau, with its

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