Langston Hughes

Paper Summary:

This paper examines Langston Hughes contribution to the Harlem Renaissance. The author examines several of his prose and poems that were written about African-Americans and their experiences, both before and during this period in history. Some of the topics he wrote about included slavery, blues and jazz which he felt shaped the experiences of his people. His writing was unique in that he was one of the first black authors to give equal voice to the female slave experience and to write about the hopes and desires that the women in this period of history, also experienced. Hughes also felt that the rise in popularity of blues and jazz contributed to the growth of intellectual and cultural activity in the black community. According to the author, Hughes felt that in order to build a future, the black community needed to acknowledge its past and how it helped influence its composition.

From the Paper:

"For while Hughes was certainly a writer of his own time and place, for all great writers are essentially local, he was also a writer of the human experience, for his poetry speaks to something inside many people whose own lives are very different in every particular from his own. But all humans dream, and fear, are filled with courage at times and at others are filled only with exhaustion. Hughes limned each of these emotions in his poems. Indeed his genius lies in his ability to blend the local " the experiences of black men and women of his generation " to nearly universal feelings in the human soul."

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