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 rhyme scheme, meter, and framed structure, can be seen as a response to the criticism about his dialectic work. The speakers have a clear and collective voice behind the rigidity of the poem’s structure, and the chaos of balancing, maintaining, and surviving is carefully constructed, as if the disguise could fall apart at any moment without each piece in its place. Not only does it show the breadth of Dunbar’s poetic dexterity, but it adds to his study of language and dialect as a whole.

Although Dunbar’s literary status initially suffered after his death due to criticism about his stereotypical depictions of Black people and his seeming refusal to publicly deride racism, contemporary scholarship seeks to reaffirm Dunbar’s place in the American literary canon as not only the first Black poet but a poet of his people, a poet who commands a wide range of literary talent and offers a rich history. Critics now view Dunbar’s classical poems, which weren’t as favored in his time as his dialectic poetry, as works of art that critically place Dunbar alongside the English Romantics and Dunbar’s contemporary (and supporter) James Whitcomb Riley. Dunbar’s large body of work, which includes novels, short story collections, poetry collections, and even a libretto he wrote with English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, highlight Dunbar’s dexterity as a literary phenomenon who shaped the literary canon and continues to do so.