Comparing Poems 'My Mother And' The Negro Mother

What is motherhood? The dictionary meaning of motherhood is the state of being a mother, but motherhood can be defined by a mother’s individual experiences with their children. Giving birth to a child is one thing but to love, nurture, and give your child all of you is motherhood. In the poems: “My Mother” by Claude McKay, “The Mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks, and “The Negro Mother” by Langston Hughes they display what motherhood is in different shades and with different experiences. Claude McKay, a Jamaican writer and poet, was born in Jamaica on September 15, 1889. His work ranged from vernacular verse celebrating peasant life in Jamaica to poems challenging white authority in America, and from generally straightforward tales of black life in

At thirteen he moved with his mother and her husband, before the family eventually settled in Cleveland, Ohio. It was in Lincoln that Langston Hughes began writing poetry. After, he spent a year, in Mexico followed by a year at Columbia University in New York City. He finished his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. Langston Hughes was a poet, social activist, and novelist. Some works by Langston Hughes includes: The Negros Speaks of Rivers (1921), The Weary Blues (1926), The Ways of White Folks (1934), The Big Sea (1940), and Best of Simple (1961). Gwendolyn Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas, on June 7, 1917, and raised in Chicago. Many of Gwendolyn Brooks work shows a political consciousness. She was the author of more than twenty books of poetry including: Children Coming Home (1991), Blacks (1987), To Disembark (1981), The Near-Johannaesburg Boy and other Poems (1986), Riot (1969), and in the Mecca (1986). Gwendolyn Brooks is one of the most highly regarded, highly influential, and widely read poets of the 20th century American poetry (poetryfoundation.org). She was the most honored poet even in her