Langston Hughes

As a talented American author, Langston Hughes captured and integrated the realities and demands of Africa America in his work by utilizing the beauty, dignity, and heritage of blacks in America in the 1920s. Hughes was reared for a time by his grandmother in Kansas after his parents’ divorce. Influenced by the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Carl Sandburg, he began writing creatively while still a boy.

Not only did Hughes suffer from poverty but also from restrictions that came with living in a segregated community. While he attended an integrated school, he was not permitted to play team sports or join the Boy Scouts. Even his favorite movie theater put a sign that read “No Colored Admitted.” In spite of these obstacles, Hughes developed a natural sense of self-confidence and hope. His grandmother always lived as a free woman and was insistent about standing up for the right of all people to be free. Under her influence, Hughes learned to endure the hardships of prejudice without surrendering his dignity or pride. (Berry 7)

“My father hated Negroes,” Hughes wrote, “I think he hated himself, too, for being a Negro.” Hughes wanted to attend Colombia University and needed his father’s financial aid. His father re

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He was discriminated against from dormitories to the student newspaper. He created a body of work-poetry, fiction, journalism, essays, plays, and song lyrics-that reflected on the black experience and informed white Americans about racial issues. (Berry 21)

When he traveled to Paris, Hughes developed a love for jazz. A Research Brief: Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance. His poetry served as an inspiration and a mentor for the younger black writers who came of age in the 1960s. The Harlem Renaissance was a provocative response to the new era: an aesthetic response that transcends time to celebrate identity, creativity, the past, and the present. (Rummel 54-55)

The versatility of Hughes was apparent in his capacity to create every literary genre-poetry, fiction, drama, essay, and history. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988. He did not hide the fact that he lived with racism, but he talked of his strength, and the strength of many other blacks, to stand tall and believe in a better future. (Rummel 33)

Hughes accepted his vocation “to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America. His personal compassion, social awareness, and literary talent made him one of the dominant voices in American literature and perhaps the single most influential black poet. It gave African Americans a novel pride in all things black and a cultural confidence that stretched beyond the borders of Harlem to other black communities in the Western world.

Approximate Word count = 1066
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

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