James Mercer Langston Hughes And The Harlem Renaissance

Hughes’s works were a success despite the criticism they had received for their emphasis on the true portrayal of lower-class life and the hostile image of his race.James Mercer Langston Hughes is an American poet, novelist and playwright whose works that tackled African American issues which involved him as main participant in the Harlem Renaissance in 1920s. Langston Hughes, a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance, was born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri and died in 1967. His works encouraged the African Americans and voiced up his concern about race and social justice. Poverty and instability were the titles of his childhood. His parents were separated after his birth. Thus, Hughes was raised by his maternal grandmother as his mother kept moving around looking for work. Upon his grandmother’s death, Hughes moved to live with his mother an unstable life marked with constant moving until they later settled in Cleveland. During his school years, Hughes wrote poetry for the school magazine in which he published some of his writings. However, his attempts to publish in other poetry magazines were turned down. In 1920, Hughes became a centre of attention after publishing his first poem The Negro Speaks of the River in The Crisis in the summer following his graduation from high school. Hughes studied in Columbia University in 1921 for a year then moved to Harlem during its golden era to become “a part of its burgeoning cultural movement” which was known as the Harlem Renaissance