Langston Hughes

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the works of Langston Hughes, a major poet of the Negro Renaissance. It looks at how he copes with the reality of race in his works and with the social tensions that beset the black community. It shows how his poetry addresses issues of racial inequality and the personal need for confession, using his own life as an example. It discusses how his poetry derives from a different tradition from most American poetry, a tradition of black culture, of jazz and of protest.

From the Paper:

"Hughes came from what was called the Harlem Renaissance, the term used to refer to the development of artistic expression in the black community beginning in Harlem in New York. Hughes created poetry that represented the spirit of black America at the time. He used his own experience and that of other blacks to accomplish this. He did not concentrate entirely on blacks in America but looked to their African roots for inspiration as well. Jemie writes that Hughes had an image of Africa that was related to his image of America. In his early poems, Africa was a "distant ideal," while America is "a cold, joyless wilderness" (Jemie 98). "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," says Jemie, is one of Hughes' poems about heritage and strength."

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