Langston Hughes Biography

Langston Hughes is a very famous and popular name in American literature. Langston Hughes was a poet, playwright, and columnist. Hughes was born in Joplin Missouri on February 1st 1902. Langston’s first and most popular piece of work “The Negro Speak of Rivers” was published in a very popular black journal, which allowed the everyday person to read his work. Langston Hughes was very well known in the Harlem Renaissance.

I feel like in Langston Hughes poem “ The Negro Speaks of the River” is very deep, I see the similarities to Douglass in the sense of Douglass's songs his people would sing while working in the fields. In Hughes poems his meaningful of the rivers back in Africa, how to he remembers them, is like when they sing there songs. It is to make sure the culture is pasted down and not forgotten by the people who did

Langston Hughes and Martin Luther King grew up in somewhat similar environments. Both, as african american men, had to deal with the everyday and very evident racism of an unequal society. Langston Hughes was raised by his Grandmother until her death. He went to live with his mother, “and they moved to several cities before eventually settling in Cleveland, Ohio,” (Biography.com Editors 2). Here, he went through the self-discovery period of teenage years, at Central High School, a predominantly white high school. He began to write poetry and graduated in 1920(Biography.com Editors 3).

Langston Hughes is known as one of the most influential African American poets. He has a large collection of works that still influence African American society today. Hughes contributed towards the Harlem Renaissance, which produced a surge of African American works in the 1920s. In addition, Langston Hughes is also known as one of the most inspiring African American civil rights activists and advocated for African American unity and solidarity. One of his most famous works is “Negro,” which is a poem that highlights African American identity through the personification of African American heritage. The narrator is the personified figure that connects African Americans by explaining historical allusions that contributed to African American heritage and culture. This personified narrator enhances the theme of unified heritage among African Americans in the poem “Negro” with the use of structure, historical parallels, and historical context.

Langston Hughes was a very famous poet but also a dreamer during the 1920s when discrimination and racism were main problems in the society. He was a civil right activist who proposed the idea of equal opportunities between all races by writing poems, books, and playwrights; many of his famous literatures affected Americans in many crucial ways. Hughes’s main idea against the society was equality however he discovered that it is difficult to change people’s “norms” and stereotypes. Therefore, his humorous and serious type of writing effectively appealed to many audiences which eventually played a big role of achieving racial equality and equal opportunities.

Langston Hughes experienced everything an African American in the early 1900s could and then some. I would call his life unique. Hughes experienced the realities of not having a dollar in his pocket, and the advantages of the high life with money not being an issue. He saw both sides of American life but what made him famous was a product of the lower points in his life and the experiences given to him by a racist society.

James Mercer Langston Hughes was the first African American to achieve national prominence, and the figure of such stature in the black community. His influence and ideas were inescapable, as he saw himself as a poet for an entire nation. Hughes role model, Walt Whitman helped to give him the ideas of the optimistic vision of America and how to achieve and accomplish some of the things he did in his life. Langston Hughes inspired many people and expressed the African American spirt and soul in his works.

America is well known as the land of the free and the home opportunity. Although it is said everyone is equal in every way, that has not always been the case. Langston Hughes is a poet who tried to emphasize the idea of equality among all human beings. Hughes underlined the basis of the American Dream with what is and what should be in the societal era he lived in. In hindsight he believed his poems helped others realize the injustices that all minorities had to face during this era.

When people think of the Harlem Renaissance they think of music, literature, art, and the ability for African-Americans to be able to showcase their talents. This was a time where such authors like Langston Hughes were able to take their thoughts and portray them in a different light for the world to see. Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri where he lived for a brief period until his parents split and he was forced to live with his grandmother. He lived with her until thirteen when she shipped him back off to his mom in Lincoln, Illinois. Upon graduating high school, he attended Columbia University for one year then decided to travel to Africa and Europe before settling down in Washington D.C. Langston Hughes was not known to target any specific

Throughout much of his poetry, Langston Hughes wrestles with complex notations of African American dreams, racism, and discrimination during the Harlem Renaissance. Through various poems, Hughes uses rhetorical devices to state his point of view. He tends to use metaphors, similes, imagery, and connotation abundantly to illustrate in what he strongly believes. Discrimination and racism were very popular during the time when Langston Hughes began to develop and publish his poems, so therefore his poems are mostly based on racism and discrimination, and the desire of an African American to live the American dream. Langston Hughes poems served as a voice for all African Americans greatly throughout his living life, and even after his death.

To begin, Hughes poem was about how African Americans were looked at as differently. The poem was about how blacks were segregated from whites. They were treated different and not looked at as human beings. Blacks were not allowed to do stuff that whites did. Hughes wrote about how blacks were not allowed to eat at the table with other white people. They had to leave and eat somewhere else. This poem is mainly about segregation during this time. Blacks and whites were

Langston Hughes poems “Harlem” and “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” are two poems that have a deeper meaning than a reader may notice. Hughes 's poem “Harlem” incorporates the use of similes to make a reader focus on the point Hughes is trying to make. In “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” Hughes shows how close he was to the rivers on a personal level. With those two main focuses highlighted throughout each poem, it creates an intriguing idea for a reader to comprehend. In these particular poems, Hughes’s use of an allusion, imagery, and symbolism in each poem paints a clear picture of what Hughes wants a reader to realize.

Langston Hughes was an American poem born in the early nineteen hundreds, who became known as the leader of the Harlem Renaissance. He published many poems that brought light to the life of people of color in the twentieth century. There are three poems that the speakers are used to portray three major themes of each poem. Racism, the American Dream, and Hopes are all the major themes that Hughes uses to highlight the average life of a person of color. Theme for English B,” “Harlem,” and “Let America Be America Again” were three of Hughes’s poems that was selected to underline the themes. Meanwhile, the readers can learn something for each of the poems and apply it to their life. They can also noticed how Langston Hughes’s poems often contains hope and noted the possibility that both white and black people can live together in peace and harmony. And the poems also represent the average person of colors’ life and their struggles and frustrations towards the white community throughout the twentieth century.

Langston Hughes uses images of oppression to reveal a deeper truth about the way minorities have been treated in America. He uses his poems to bring into question some of Walt Whitman’s poems that indirectly state that all things are great, that all persons are one people in America, which Hughes claims is false because of all the racist views and oppression that people face from the people America. This oppression is then used to keep the minorities from

Langston Hughes is an African American Poet who is very closely connected to his culture and expresses his feelings very thoroughly through his poetry in a jazz style. Langston Hughes is a modern poet who ignore the classical style of writing poetry and instead, in favor of oral and improve traditions of the Black culture. In majority of Langston’s poetry, many of his audience seems to take away a very strong message that many can apply to themselves or to others or his poems gives you an educational background of what’s going on in the African American community right now. For example, Langston Hughes writes a poetry piece called Afro American Fragment, which gives you a great breakdown of what an everyday African American person goes through considering that their whole history is basically taken away from them. Langston seems to show his audience that in books we never hear much about what contributions a African American person has done except for being brought to America and being a slave. Therefore, the whole theme about this poem is everything is a mystery and a question and it will take years to potentially to find an answer.