Heritage

“Heritage” immediately establishes the kind of heritage it addresses: African heritage of someone who lives far away from Africa, which represents not merely a geographical entity but a cultural concept with specific associations that may or may not accurately reflect current or past African life. The Africa described in the poem is a personal vison of the individual speaker who explicitly acknowledges being far removed from it. They have sub-Saharan Africa in mind, distinguished by its natural beauty (Lines 2-3) and dark-skinned inhabitants, whom the speaker endows with admirable physical characteristics: “Strong bronzed men” (Line 4) and “regal Black / Women” (Lines 4-5). They are the speaker’s distant ancestors; they metaphorically sprang from the loins of these Black African women (Line 5) “When the birds of Eden sang” (Line 6), indicative of a faraway, even mythological, past. From a more historical point of view, the speaker is “three centuries removed / From the scenes his fathers loved” (Lines 7-8). In other words, they are a descendant of Black Africans forced from their land in the 17th century and sold into slavery on the American continent. The speaker, a 20th-century African American, wishes to reflect on a question important to their own identity: “What is Africa to me?” (Line 10)