Literary Analysis Of Danez Smith's Dinosaurs In The Hood
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There is a new movie out in theaters. An action-packed movie where a young African American and his city block of misfits take on rapid dinosaurs in the driveways of their own homes. Sounds like a normal movie but this movie is not focused on the “color” of the boy but on the actions of the neighborhood.The stereotypes of colored men and women in the film industry are beautifully destroyed in the free verse poem “Dinosaurs in the Hood” as Danez Smith makes a trailer of words for this movie, just waiting to be released. Smith is a colored queer poet who is known for his fiery political poems that took Youtube by storm. (cite)
Smith starts the poem with a communal invitation to make a new movie. He uses juxtapositions to show the mood of the film is when “Jurassic Park meets Friday meets The Pursuit of Happyness,” meaning a suspenseful creature movie with the influence of “hood boys.” The last three lines of the first stanza paint an image of an African American boy playing with a toy dinosaur and gazes out his window to see a T.Rex because “there has to be a T.Rex.” Due to typecast dinosaur movies it has to be a T.Rex, but leaves the question open to if this movie is about an African American boy what stereotypes about him have to be in the movie? Bluntly, Smith states in stanza two “don’t let Tarantino direct this” due to his overuse of racial slurs and violence, then goes on to explain the metaphor of “the boy with the gun.” In another poem by Danez Smith he shares