Langston Hughes Research Paper

Hughes began his life in strife and struggles; soon after he was born his mother and father parted ways leaving him with no father figure (Biography.com 2015). While his mother moved around, Hughes stayed with his grandmother. She died when he was a young teen, causing this young boy more grief but also allowing him to go live with his mother once again (Biography.com 2015). Soon after these trials, he began to discover the art of poetry and started composing some pieces himself. When Langston went to visit his father in Mexico he wrote a very famous poem named “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” which tells of the soul of the African American and the heritage within them (Biography.com 2015). Hughes mentions rivers in Africa, tying this poem deep to the roots and showing the journey from Africa to America. During this poem Hughes mentions how “My soul has grown deep like the rivers,” which was an exact representation of many African Americans downcast thoughts during this time period. (Hughes 2017). This poem expressed the soul and mind of the black community during this post-slave oppression. Many white men still held grudges against the different race and still persecuted them daily. This did not matter to the African American community because they continued to push and rebel against the racial injustice. Langston Hughes used his poetry skills to voice the heart and soul

Hughes graduated from high school in 1920 and went to Mexico to visit his father. Hughes wrote poetry and submitted his work to magazines multiple times, although they were never chosen until one day, in 1920, The Negro Speaks of Rivers was published and highly praised in a magazine called "The Crisis." In 1921, Hughes returned to the United States and briefly attended Columbia University. He dropped out in 1922, but at his time there he became part of Harlem's burgeoning cultural movement. He

In 1926 he enrolled at Lincoln University (in a town called Lincoln University, Pennsylvania), where he graduated in 1929, the same year he finished his first novel. After attempting to come to terms with his father's materialism and leaving Harlem, feeling betrayed and misunderstood, Hughes went first to Haiti and then, back in the United States as the Great Depression began to settle in, the travelled through the American south, reading his poetry to people in churches and schools. Following in the footsteps of his grandmother's family, he took his life in his hands by appearing at the University of North

James Mercer Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, on February 1, 1902, to James Nathaniel Hughes, a lawyer and businessman, and Carrie Mercer (Langston) Hughes, a teacher. The couple separated shortly thereafter. James Hughes was, by his son’s account, a cold man who hated blacks (and hated himself for being one), feeling that most of them deserved their ill fortune because of what he considered their ignorance and laziness. Langston’s youthful visits to him there, although sometimes for extended periods, were strained and painful. He attended Columbia University in 1921-22, and when he died he, left everything to three elderly women who had cared for him in his last illness,

Coming from a long lineage of politically active individuals it was inevitable that Langston would use his gift of writing to help change the world. Langston Hughes used his personal experiences of growing up in different parts of the Midwest and an unorthodox childhood as a driving force for his poetry. The topic of his poems ranged a variety of political and social topics that were used to explain outcry against racial injustice and promoted equality (americaslibrary.gov). Throughout his work, he was able to help shed light on black culture, humor, and spirituality but also describe the black experience in America. With his long-lasting legacy, Langston Hughes has played an important role in the advancement of black culture and civil rights.

To begin, Langston Hughes had a lot of key contribution towards him becoming an innovative writer. For instance, Hughes’s Grandmother had a major influence on his love of literature as he described in his novel Hughes's grandmother was also a marvelous storyteller, narrating “long beautiful stories about people who wanted to make the Negroes free” (The Big Sea: An Autobiography, Langston Hughes, Page 17, 1940.) Langston Hughes is widely considered one of the best poets who ever walked the earth. Many of his themes focused on the issues that were confronting the nation: race, equality and suffrage. Hughes highlights some of his work that fell in line with this perspective.

Langston Hughes has showed the happiness and pain of the African American struggles in his poetry and plays. Throughout the Harlem Reniassance Langston wrote 800 poems and was one of the most infuencal people in black history. His lyrical jazz flow gave is poems and short stories a creative artistic style to tell his story. He touched and influence many artists past, present, and future. In his poems and stories he taught African Americans to be proud of who they are and where they come from.

Cleanliness was a main symptom of Hughes's OCD. Every time Hughes would wash his hands in public, he had to use his own black soap that was kept with him at all times. He would wash his hands for a lengthy period, sometimes to the extent of bleeding from applied pressure. After washing hands, touching the door was not an option, either the door would be opened with a towel or somebody else had to open the door. Another cleanliness related symptom was food and how it was cooked. When Hughes attended a family dinner at his girlfriend's house, the steak was served rare. Hughes would poke the steak with his fork, yet refused to eat it. When Hughes was invited to eat dinner at the Senators house, brook trout was the main dish, a bite was taken,

The period of the Harlem Renaissance was a time of great change and exploration for African Americans . It was during this point in the early twentieth century that African Americans were exploring their cultural and social roots. With the rapid expansion of a cohesive black community in the area, it was only a matter of time before the finest minds in Black America converged to share their ideas and unleash their creative essences upon a country that had for so long silenced them. In the midst of this bohemian convergence, many notable figures arose who would give a new voice to African Americans. With such great notables as Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, Zora Neale, and James Johnson, mainstream American now had a unique window into the

Many African American authors who were part of this magnificent movement explored what it meant to be black in the United States. The most authoritative American poet of the 1920’s was Langston Hughes. He was an American novelist and poet born on February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. He also produced his foremost poem in 1921. He was done with High School in 1921 and spent the next year with his father at Mexico. Two years after, Hughes wrote a poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” which reflected his root in America’s culture and was published in “The Crisis Magazine” and equally importantly got praised.(The Biography.com website. Retrieved from https://www.biography.com/people/langston-hughes-9346313). He returned back to the United States

Influence of Poet’s Perspective on Harlem Depending on one’s perspective of Harlem, a neighborhood of New York’s Manhattan which has shaped the lives of many African American immigrants, it could be viewed as either a utopia or dystopia. There are many poems written about Harlem and they all add to our understanding of Harlem through the poet’s point of view of the neighborhood. Each poet’s distinctive perspectives influence the reader’s understanding of Harlem by allowing us to see the neighborhood at a different aspect. Langston Hughes described Harlem as a cold, heartless place where dreams perish.

James Langston Hughes was born February 1st, 1901, in Joplin, Missouri. His father, James Nathaniel Hughes, was a stenographer and bookkeeper and his mother, Carrie Mercer Langston, was a stenographer. Hughes's father abandoned him and his mother and moved to Cuba and then to Mexico when Hughes was young to escape the racism of America. Often left by his mother who was unemployed and searching for jobs, Langston Hughes was mainly raised by his grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas. Finally in 1915, he moved Lincoln, Nebraska and later to Cleveland, Ohio with his mother and step-father.

Langston Hughes was one of the most significant writers and scholars of the Harlem Renaissance, which was the African American artistic movement in the 1920s that celebrated black life and culture. Hughes's creative brilliance was swayed by his life in New York City's Harlem, a mainly African American region. His historical works helped form American literature and politics. Hughes just like others active in the Harlem Renaissance had a robust sense of racial vanity. Through his poetry, novels, plays, essays, and children's books, he endorsed equality, convicted racism and prejudice, and celebrated African American principles, humor, and holiness. Hughes took a diverse and flamboyant background to his writing. Before he was twelve years old he had lived in six different American cities. When his first book was published, he had already been a truck farmer, cook, waiter, college graduate,

Langston Hughes, who wrote in the mid 1900’s, can be better understood by studying his struggles with racism and segregation, his foreign affairs, and his involvement with anti-racist movements like the NAACP. One of his most popular poems, The Negro Speaks of Rivers, can be better understood by studying his childhood, his impact on young writers,and his influences.

Few poets in the twentieth century, and perhaps even in any century, can be compared to Langston Hughes. Hughes wrote with his heart and soul, creating poems that everyone could understand. He expressed love for all races, colors, and religions and did not judge anybody until he had reason to judge them. He wrote to entertain, to inspire, to teach, and to make a point. His way with words made him the most popular and prolific black writer of the twentieth century (Offinoski, 32).