A review by theresidentbookworm
We Wear the Mask by Paul Laurence Dunbar

5.0

Paul Laurence Dunbar's parents had escaped slavery, but he was all too aware that he was still not really free. Dunbar did not have the money to go to college, and racial prejudice kept him from being able to get a good job. In We Wear the Mask, Dunbar intends to challenges the stereotyping and hidden pain surrounding African Americans at that time, but the poem's text really applies to any group of minority groups: women, the LGBT community, etc.

Just the first two lines of the poem are so powerful: "We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,— ". How true that can be. We were all kinds of masks for our parents and our friends and our teachers. But why do we feel the need to wear them, and do they ever come off? Dunbar writes, "Why should the world be over-wise,In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see us, while We wear the mask." It is a bitter truth, but also a valid one. Why should the world care about Dunbar's tears and sighs or those of fellow African Americans? Does the world care for anyone's sighs?

We Wear the Mask made me think, and it's rare I really want to think that complexly about poems assigned for schools. Definitely one I'd recommend.