Atmospheric Black Breathlessness, A Dream Deferred

This article argues that “a dream deferred,” as conceived by Langston Hughes in his book-length poem Montage of a Dream Deferred, is not a phrase defining a single moment but is instead a concept of continuity defining the ongoing atmospheric condition of existing within American racism. A dream deferred is analyzed here as a pervasiveness that can be understood as being of the air. It is an aerosolized anti-Blackness, polluted air, an atmosphere that makes it difficult to breathe—Black breathlessness. The concept indicates that the relatively nuanced atmosphere of Hughes’s postwar Harlem is also the explicit atmosphere of the present with its outspoken attention on interconnected issues, including anti-Black terror and disproportionate Black birthing parent mortality and pandemic impact. A dream deferred persists as the surround, the atmosphere, is the air itself, and is of and within Black breath and breathlessness.