SOURCE: Jarraway, David R. “Montage of an Otherness Deferred: Dreaming Subjectivity in Langston Hughes.” American Literature 68, no. 4 (December 1996): 819-47.

In the following essay, Jarraway focuses critical attention on issues of subjectivity and identity in Hughes's Montage of a Dream Deferred.

Our identities are often provoked by what we oppose.

—Jeffrey Escoffer, “The Limits of Multiculturalism”

In the Vietnamese language, … [w]hen you talk to someone you establish a relationship. Such a self concept is a way of experiencing the other, of ritualistically sharing the other's essence and cherishing it. In our culture, seeing and feeling the dimension of harm done by separating self from other requires somewhat more work. Very little in our language or culture encourages looking at others as parts of ourselves.

—Patricia J. Williams, The Alchemy of Race and Rights

… a subject who points to him or herself as subject-in-process, a work that displays its...