Langston Hughes and His Poetry
Over thirty years after his death, Langston Hughes still remains one of the most influential writers of our time. His life, so full of passion due to the events he experienced from his childhood to young adulthood, is reflected in all of his written works. Heartaches and joys taught this man to understand all emotions and skill allowed him to place his thoughts on paper for the world to see, hear, and feel. A history of what Langston Hughes has lived through lies within each piece he has written.
Early in his life, Hughes was subjected to the pain of losing a parent. Though not through death, the loss of his father due to his parents' separation caused him great pain. With only one parent in care of him, Hughes spent the majority of his youth living in poverty. When he grew older he allowed his distant father to support his college education for the first year. At the closing of his freshman year, Hughes found that he did not want his life to continue in that direction and withdrew from Columbia University.
After working numerous menial jobs, Hughes stumbled upon a profession that truly suited him. He became a merchant seaman and recurrently visited various ports in West Africa. From these travels he learned that he loved seeing new and foreign places. Instead of returning to the United States, Hughes spent time living in far off places such as Pans, Genoa, and Rome. In each location he gathered information and experience that he began writing about. Upon returning to the U.S., Hughes released his first publication and gained instant attention and fame. Now comfortable with what he wanted for his life, Hughes returned to college and grad...
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...suffering and the goodness that he experienced throughout his life helped mold his work into the inspiration that it became to so many people.
Works Cited
Hughes, Langston. "Black Identity and Langston Hughes" The Craft of Literature third edition. Gioia, Dana and Kennedy X.J. New York: Longman, 2003. 772-773.
Hughes, Langston. "End." Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 3rd Compact ed. New York: Longman, 2003. Pg.766.
Hughes, Langston. "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" The Craft of Literature third edition. Gioia, Dana and Kennedy X.J. New York: Longman, 2003. 766-767.
Hughes, Langston. "The Negro Speaks of Rivers." Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 3rd Compact ed. New York: Longman, 2003. Pg.759.
Then by Morris Gleitzman is a war fiction novel about the life of two children, Felix and Zelda during wartime Poland. Then is first published in 2008 and is printed in Australia. Morris Gletizman’s message in the book allows readers to remember and relive the memory of the unforgettable history period of the Holocaust and the Nazis. Gleitzman wanted to show the rare kindness of people during wartime and the effect it had on children like the main characters, Felix and Zelda.
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.
One of the most important of the influential people in Langston Hughes’ life was his grandmother. The ability to persevere through hardships and trials were her teachings. Lessons also learned were those of strength and determination. The proof of this is evident in a few of his literary works where a mother figure encourages and teaches her child, or student, life lessons on
Hughes, Langston. The Negro mother, and other dramatic recitations. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1971. Print.
Hughes mother went through protracted separations and reconciliations in her second marriage (she and her son from this marriage would live with him off and on in later years. He was raised by alternately by her, by his maternal grandmother, and, after his grandmother’s death, by family friends. 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. In 1915, he was class poet of his grammar-school graduating class in Lincoln. From 1916 to 1920, he attended Central High School in Cleveland, where he was a star athlete, wrote poetry and short stories (and published many of them in the Central High Monthly), and on his own read such modern poets as Paul Laurence Dunbar, Edgar Lee Masters, Vachel Lindsay, and Carl Sandburg. His classmates were for the most part the children of European immigrants, who treated him largely without discrimination and introduced him to leftist political ideas.
Hughes, Langston. "Let America Be America Again." _Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing_. 4th ed. Eds. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1995. 723-24.
R: Trotman, C. 1995. Langston Hughes: The Man, His Art, and His Continuing Influence. Routledge 1995
Rampersad, Arnold, ed., and David Roessell, assoc. ed. The Collected Poems ofLangston Hughes. New York: Vintage Books,
The contradiction of being both black and American was a great one for Hughes. Although this disparity was troublesome, his situation as such granted him an almost begged status; due to his place as a “black American” poet, his work was all the more accessible. Hughes’ black experience was sensationalized. Using his “black experience” as a façade, however, Hughes was able to obscure his own torments and insecurities regarding his ambiguous sexuality, his parents and their relationship, and his status as a public figure.
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 poems “Visitors to the Black Belt”, “Note on Commercial Theatre”, “Democracy”, and “Theme for English B” by Hughes all illustrate the theme of staying true to one’s cultural identity and refusing to compromise it despite the constant daily struggle it meant to be black in an Anglo centric society.
Hughes, Langston. "Theme for English B." The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry. Editor: Jay Parini. Columbia University Press, 1995. 481.
Aside from the mother’s race and gender, her lack of education also plays a role in the hardships in her life. Hughes makes her limited education apparent in his use of her vernacular. Words like “ain’t” and “I’se” (MS lines 4, 9) symbolize the fact that Mother is from a Black background and she does not have sufficient education. These limitations, however, do not keep her from persevering and keeping a positive paradigm. She wants her son to realize that, though they may not have the best education or a more advantageous skin color, they must strive to overcome these hardships to reach their higher potential.
Langston Hughes lived from early to mid-twentieth century America, a time period filled with racism and oppression of African Americans. Hughes, who is an avid poet, playwright, writer, and scholar, brilliantly speaks not only to the problems he faced, but also to his hopeful dreams of a brighter future in his works. The harsh racial discrimination he encountered, along with the experience granted to him by his diverse heritage, essentially shaped every aspect of his life. Hughes 's struggles are reflected within his very being, and are seen publically in his beliefs and literary pursuits. Specifically, in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”, Hughes uses poetry to protest racism by embracing the deep roots of African American’s ancestry.
In his poems, Langston Hughes treats racism not just a historical fact but a “fact” that is both personal and real. Hughes often wrote poems that reflect the aspirations of black poets, their desire to free themselves from the shackles of street life, poverty, and hopelessness. He also deliberately pushes for artistic independence and race pride that embody the values and aspirations of the common man. Racism is real, and the fact that many African-Americans are suffering from a feeling of extreme rejection and loneliness demonstrate this claim. The tone is optimistic but irritated. The same case can be said about Wright’s short stories. Wright’s tone is overtly irritated and miserable. But this is on the literary level. In his short stories, he portrays the African-American as a suffering individual, devoid of hope and optimism. He equates racism to oppression, arguing that the African-American experience was and is characterized by oppression, prejudice, and injustice. To a certain degree, both authors are keen to presenting the African-American experience as a painful and excruciating experience – an experience that is historically, culturally, and politically rooted. The desire to be free again, the call for redemption, and the path toward true racial justice are some of the themes in their
Hughes, Langston. “Harlem”. 1951. Approaching Literature: Reading + Thinking + Writing. 3rd ed. Ed. Peter Shakel and Jack Ridl. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 1066-1072. Print.