She of the Dancing Feet Sings

Countee Cullen's poem "She of the Dancing Feet Sings" from page 131 of The New Negro tells of a woman that is happy in a place that others deem imperfect because dancing is banned.  She would rather enjoy herself in her place where she may dance than in the generally accepted heaven that the angels keep ordered and sacred.  This poem has the same essence of the story George Swanson Starling tell on page 398 0f The Warmth of Other Suns, where the children of the migrants are sent back to the South for the summer so that they may see the other possibility or the home from which their family came.  They send the children to the South so they may see that the North might not feel so wonderful and free, but in comparison, it is heaven.  The limits on dancing in the realm of the speaker in the poem are analogous to the racism of the North, the only racism these children born in New York know.  Thy see the restrictions of the South or the hell of the poem and are content to live with the problems that they must deal with in the North.  The parents also want the children to see the value of the sacrifices the parents made to get out of the state of Florida in pursuit of New York.  They had to give up jobs, family stability, and the culture they were born into which is similar to the natural dance that the speaker in Cullen's poem is supposed to give up to make it into heaven.  The dancing that the speaker must keep in order to enjoy the land that others do not consider heaven is that same as the experience of life in the South that the parents in Starling's story want their children to know, so that they may have a background or sense of self to grow from just as the dance is the speaker's identity.