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Themes in langston hughes writings essays
Langston Hughes culture through his work
Langston Hughes culture through his work
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Throughout our lives, we often deal with boundaries created by society and ourselves. Racism and prejudices have plagued our society for years. There have been many people using many methods techniques in the fight against racism. One man used his art and the power of words to bring forth the issues of injustice suffered in America, he was Langston Hughes. Langston Hughes was a Negro Writer, born at the turn of the century in 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His ancestry included three major race groups, however, he lived and was identified as a Negro or Colored (Hughes referred to himself as "colored" or "Negro," because those were the terms used to refer to African-Americans in this era). He spent most of his early years with his grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas due to the separation of his mother and father. In 1908 when Langston was ready to start school, his mother was told that he could not attend a nearby because her son was black. The school was located in Topeka, Kansas and was mostly white. Langston’s mother, Carrie, challenged and fought the school over their decision. She won her fight and Langston was finally admitted to the school. By the time he was fourteen, he had lived in Joplin, Buffalo, Cleveland, Lawrence, Kansas, Mexico City, Topeka, Kansas, Colorado Springs, Kansas City, and Lincoln, Illinois. Even though he moved often during his life there are people that Langston was greatly influenced by, his grandmother implanted a sense of dedication, she told him wonderful stories about Frederick Douglas and Sojourner Truth and once took him to hear Booker T. Washington. Shortly after his thirteenth birthday, his grandmother died and Langston moved in with James and Mary Reed for the next two years, they were not related but... ... middle of paper ... ...f Missouri Press, 2007. “Langston Hughes’s Queer Blues” Martin Joseph Ponce Modern Language Quarterly 2005 66(4):505-538, DOI:10.1215/00267929-66-4-505 Hughes, Langston. The Big Sea: An Autobiography by Langston Hughes. New York: Hill and Wang, 1940. Baldwin, J. Sermons and blues (Review: Selected Poems of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes). Mar 29, 1959: 1-2. Colum, M. M. The new books of poetry (Review: Shakespeare in Harlem by Langston Hughes). New York Times, Mar 22, 1942: 1-5. Jabari Asim, “The Politics and Poetry of Langston Hughes,” Washington Post, Monday, June 7, 2004. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21849-2004Jun7.html (accessed July 1, 2008). Langston Hughes, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” Modern American Poetry, http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/hughes/mountain.htm (accessed June 27, 2008).
Langston Hughes was born on February 1st, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. He started education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. He went on to write and publish his first work, a poem called, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” in Crisis magazine. He then continued his education at Columbia University in New York in 1921. He then lived for sometime in Paris and after returning to the United States, he worked in Washington D.C. as a busboy. Later after that, Vachel Lindsay discovered Hughes literary talents. Hughes talents did not only exist in poetry, he also expanded his talent into music, play writing, and short stories, for example the “Simple” stories. His most prominent work however was written and published during the Harlem Renaissance a time where many other African-American authors were showcasing their work and being published. Hughes however, stood above the rest with his multiple talents and work which spread across the board. The white society of America at the time of the Harlem Renaissance and years after began to label him as a radical. Hughes remained extremely prolific to the very end of his life. Hughes published over forty books, including a series of children’s books. However, if you add his translations and his many anthologies of black writing, the amount of books he has published would double. He remained a controversial figure, having been considered a dangerous radical in the 1940s. Hughes was now, as he retained his lifelong commitment to racial integration, rejected by 1960s radicals considered to be a part of the problem, rather than part of the solution. However, that would not stop Hughes from being recognized as one of the important black a...
James Mercer Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, on February 1, 1902, to James Nathaniel Hughes, a lawyer and businessman, and Carrie Mercer (Langston) Hughes, a teacher. The couple separated shortly thereafter. James Hughes was, by his son’s account, a cold man who hated blacks (and hated himself for being one), feeling that most of them deserved their ill fortune because of what he considered their ignorance and laziness. Langston’s youthful visits to him there, although sometimes for extended periods, were strained and painful. He attended Columbia University in 1921-22, and when he died he, left everything to three elderly women who had cared for him in his last illness, and Langston was not even mentioned in his will.
As a poet who paved the way for African American artists to flourish in a white dominated world, Langston Hughes changed the face of writers during the era of the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes is the descendant of a mixed race and background, but he is considered the father of the “New Negro Movement.” His most noted piece of literature, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” which was written in 1926, still applies to the youth and elderly of Blacks in America. As a young black woman in America’s 21st century, the realization has been made that not many things have changed in regards to the plight of the “Negro” in America. William Pickens said, “The new Negro is not really new; he is the same Negro under new conditions and subjected to new demands” (79). This quote claims that the Negro is neither new nor old but constantly evolving based upon new situations and predicaments. “The Negro Artists and the Racial Mountain” supports the statement that Black Americans are continuously scrutinized for assimilating into Western culture but are praised for embracing Pan-Africanism.
“Langston Hughes, The Big Sea, 1940” United States History: Reconstruction to the Present. Boston, Mass: Pearson / Prentice Hall, 2009. 927-354, 357, and 358.
Hughes, Langston. “Militant.” History is a Weapon: A Selection of the Poetry of Langston Hughes, n.d. 29 April, 2014.
During the early to mid-twentieth century Langston Hughes contributed vastly to a very significant cultural movement later to be named the “Harlem Renaissance.” At the time it was named the “New Negro Movement,” which involved African Americans in creating and expressing their words through literature and art. Hughes contributed in a variety of different aspects including plays, poems, short stories, novels and even jazz. He was even different from other notable black poets at the time in the way that he shared personal experiences rather than the ordinary everyday experiences of black America. His racial pride helped mold American politics and literature into what it is today.
middle of paper ... ... Hughes, a.k.a. Langston, a.k.a. " The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/hughes/mountain.htm, Accessed 20 November 2013.
When reading the literature of Langston Hughes, I cant help but feeling energetically charged and inspired. Equality, freedom, empowerment, renaissance, justice and perseverance, are just a taste of the subject matter Hughes offers. He amplifies his voice and beliefs through his works which are firmly rooted in race pride and race feeling. Hughes committed himself both to writing and to writing mainly about African Americans. His early love for the “wonderful world of books” was sparked by loneliness and parental neglect. He would soon lose himself in the works of Walt Whitman, Paul Laurence, Carl Sandburg and other literary greats which would lead to enhancing his ever so growing style and grace of oeuvre. Such talent, character, and willpower could only come from one’s life experiences. Hughes had allot to owe to influences such as his grandmother and great uncle John Mercer Langston - a famous African American abolitionist. These influential individuals helped mold Hughes, and their affect shines brightly through his literary works of art.
Like most, the stories we hear as children leave lasting impacts in our heads and stay with us for lifetimes. Hughes was greatly influenced by the stories told by his grandmother as they instilled a sense of racial pride that would become a recurring theme in his works as well as become a staple in the Harlem Renaissance movement. During Hughes’ prominence in the 20’s, America was as prejudiced as ever and the African-American sense of pride and identity throughout the U.S. was at an all time low. Hughes took note of this and made it a common theme to put “the everyday black man” in most of his stories as well as using traditional “negro dialect” to better represent his African-American brethren. Also, at this time Hughes had major disagreements with members of the black middle class, such as W.E.B. DuBois for trying to assimilate and promote more european values and culture, whereas Hughes believed in holding fast to the traditions of the African-American people and avoid having their heritage be whitewashed by black intellectuals.
Langston Hughes was the second child of schoolteacher Carrie (Caroline) Mercer Langston and James Nathaniel Hughes. He grew up in a series of Midwestern small towns in Missouri. Hughes's father left his family and later divorced Carrie, going to Cuba, and then Mexico, seeking to escape the enduring racism in the United States (“Biography of Langston Hughes”). His grandmother raised him until he was thirteen (as his father had left him and his mother at a young age) when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and her husband. They, later, settled in Cleveland, Ohio.
Langston Hughes was probably the most well-known literary force during the Harlem Renaissance. He was one of the first known black artists to stress a need for his contemporaries to embrace the black jazz culture of the 1920s, as well as the cultural roots in Africa and not-so-distant memory of enslavement in the United States. In formal aspects, Hughes was innovative in that other writers of the Harlem Renaissance stuck with existing literary conventions, while Hughes wrote several poems and stories inspired by the improvised, oral traditions of black culture (Baym, 2221). Proud of his cultural identity, but saddened and angry about racial injustice, the content of much of Hughes’ work is filled with conflict between simply doing as one is told as a black member of society and standing up for injustice and being proud of one’s identity. This relates to a common theme in many of Hughes’ poems: that dignity is something that has to be fought for by those who are held back by segregation, poverty, and racial bigotry.
The Collection Poems of Langston Hughes, Rapersad, A. & Roessel, D. ( Eds.) (1995) , New York, Vintage Books
Langston Hughes was deemed the "Poet Laureate of the Negro Race," a fitting title which the man who fueled the Harlem Renaissance deserved. But what if looking at Hughes within the narrow confines of the perspective that he was a "black poet" does not fully give him credit or fully explain his works? What if one actually stereotypes Hughes and his works by these over-general definitions that cause readers to look at his poetry expecting to see "blackness?" Any person's unique experiences in life and the sense of personal identity this forms most definitely affects the way he or she views the world. This molded view of the world can, in turn, be communicated by the person through artistic expression. Taking this logic into account, to more fully comprehend the message and force of Hughes' poetry one must look, not just to his work, but also at the experiences in his life that constructed his ideas about society and his own identity. In looking at Hughes' biography, one studies his struggle to form a self-identity that reflected both his African American and mainstream white cultural influence; consequently, this mixing of black and white identity that occurred throughout Hughes' life is reflected in his poem "The Weary Blues."
Hughes, Langston. The Negro mother, and other dramatic recitations. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1971. Print.
Critical Essays on Langston Hughes.