The Harlem Renaissance was in significant part a project of cultural reclamation, with poets like Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen insisting on the value of African cultural heritage and Black vernacular forms against a dominant culture that dismissed both; A poet practising cultural reclamation might write a poem that uses African naming traditions, praise forms, or oral structures to reclaim a cultural practice that colonialism and slavery suppressed, insisting on its continued vitality and relevance; Sonia Sanchez's use of haiku and other Japanese forms adapted to African American content represents a form of cultural reclamation that extends beyond African heritage to claim any formal tradition as available for Black creative use; The Natural Hair Movement's insistence on the beauty of unstraightened Black hair has generated a significant body of poetry that practises cultural reclamation by celebrating aesthetic standards rooted in African heritage rather than European norms; Lucille Clifton's poems about her Dahomey ancestors practise cultural reclamation by reaching back through slavery to recover African identity as a living source of power and pride rather than a lost and inaccessible past; A student poet might write about the experience of learning a traditional African American craft, musical form, or storytelling practice from an elder, exploring cultural reclamation as an act of love, resistance, and identity formation