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Langston Hughes Analysis

Decent Essays

Nathaniel Branden, an American psychotherapist and writer, once said, “The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.” (BrainyQuote). In an unprecedented time in American history, African-Americans used literature to protest the social injustice facing them in the 20th century. During the 1900s, they struggled to gain acceptance as a minority group in America and what’s more were subjected to the infamous Jim Crow laws. African-Americans needed an outlet to vent their frustration about their current treatment; creative literature through poems became one of the popular methods for the promotion of change. Famed Harlem Renaissance writer, Langston Hughes, composed his poem, “I, Too” in the mid-1920s. The poem, which portrays a speaker, tackles the treatment of African-Americans in the United States at that time and the hope of a better future. Evidently, Langston Hughes’s personal experiences in America inspired him to compose literature that describes the struggles of African-Americans and the common theme of acceptance in America during the 20th century with advocacy for change. Interestingly, Hughes’s knowledge inspired him to describe the challenges facing African-Americans in America in his works. In his book, “A Historical Guide to Langston Hughes”, Steven A. Tracy writes of Hughes that he, “helped charm the American audience to the future of ethnic equality...” (23). In fact, Hughes writings about African-American experiences living in

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