PAUL LAWRENCE DUNBAR

Paul Lawrence Dunbar's poems

Paul Lawrence Dunbar's Poems

Dunbar's most well known work was “We Wear the Mask,” from Majors and Minors and Lyrics of Lowly Life. One of the reasons this poem is so significant is because of its subject. “We Wear the Mask” deals with the double consciousness of African-Americans, which Dunbar's contemporary W.E.B. Du Bois was writing of, and coining the term for, at the same time Dunbar was first publishing the poem.

Dunbar writes of the external façade erected by African-Americans, the mask, concealing their true feelings of despair and unrealized dreams, as in this line, “With ...