Read this excerpt from "gravity" by judith ortiz cofer: it was my clothes that visibly upset him. he could not keep himself from staring at my waist-long hair worn loose and wild but encircled, for decoration, by a headband embroidered in navajo designs. i also wore bell-bottom blue jeans torn and faded just right, and the orange sunburst tie-dye t-shirts, once his undershirts, in fact, which i had borrowed from the clothesline to experiment with. which of the narrator's main character traits does the passage most clearly develop? a. her desire to embrace her native american rootsb. her desire to become a fashion modelc. her total abandonment of her religious faithd. her need to exercise her self-expression

The harlem renaissance dawned in an era of pervasive racism and segregation. although legally "free," many african americans were still bound by ideas that had their roots in the slavery of earlier centuries. identity and freedom are important ideas presented in many of the poems from the harlem renaissance. furthermore, the values of identity and freedom are not unique to particular times and places. as hughes expresses in "dream variations," all humans want to be able to develop their identities in freedom. what role does freedom play in the poems you read in this unit? what is required of a society to enable each individual to be true to his or her identity and be free to live by that identity? write about at least three of the poems, describing how the poet uses imagery to depict freedom and identity, the lack of it, or the desire for it.