A biography of langston hughes

The physical and financial conditions of the black working class had not been improved since ages. The killings and executions in the south of America were countless, regardless of the involvement of Blacks in the Allied armies of the Great War. In his literary works, Hughes rebels against this particular dark side of America. In his poetry and other works, he does not appear to believe in Christianity.

He also revolts against the people who use religion, particularly the principles of Christianity, as a shield to hide their oppressive actions. Langston Hughes revolts against this generally dark state of American life. Indeed, Hughes is not against Christ, nor he denounces his faith in Christ. However, he denounces the authority of white people over the religion, Bible, and church who use religion to exclude blacks.

Hughes got highly inspired from the trip to the Soviet Union, a biography of langston hughes every citizen — Whites, Blacks, Asians, and Europeans — was treated equally; even the blacks were treated more equally. Due to such revolutionary poems and poems written in favor of Russian, Langston Hughes was accused of being a communist. However, he denies the allegation put on him before the American Senate and says that Communism only inspires him to criticize the enslavement, injustice, and insecurity encountered by the Afro-American for ages.

According to Hughes, the only power able to liberate the Negros is of God; he has a firm belief in God. He believes that God acts according to his own will. The work of Langston has been greatly influenced by the life of Black Americans. In the works of Hughes, Andrew identified almost 16 themes. These themes include parental rejection, racism, miscegenation, the pride of blacks, the history of deportation, the dignity of blacks, the anger, the protest, the fight of equality, the oral tradition of Africa, social injustice, jazz, and the blues, suffering, and race.

Here is a brief description of some themes explored in the works of Langston Hughes. In the most basic sense, hybridity means mixture. The contemporary uses of the term are dispersed across several academic disciplines and are noticeable in popular culture. Basically, the term hybridity clearly demonstrates that how different cultures claim to be pure or authentic turned out to be a representation of mixture, overlap, and influence.

Langston Hughes was multicultural and mulatto. The theme of hybridity is clearly and profoundly treated in his works. For black and mulatto, hybridity is a burden: it is a cross to be tolerated. This poem also involves the Cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified. Just a biography of langston hughes Jesus, blacks also suffer from consistent oppression by the white people.

The narrator of the poem is a mulatto, a hybrid, and is on crossroads constantly thinking about to whom he shall assimilate: white or black, or none? It is written in a common and simple language. The theme of hybridity is hidden inside the title of the poem. He was called to testify before Congress during the McCarthy hearings in He attempted screenwriting in Hollywood, but found racism blocked his efforts.

He worked as a newspaper war correspondent in for the Baltimore Afro Americanwriting about Black American soldiers fighting for the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. The column often featured the fictitious Jesse B. Semple, known as Simple. Among the stories in the volume is "Thank You, Ma'am," in which a young teenage boy learns a lesson about trust and respect when an older woman he tries to rob ends up taking him home and giving him a meal.

Hughes died in New York from complications during surgery to treat prostate cancer on May 22,at the age of Through the black American oral tradition and drawing from the activist experiences of her generation, Mary Langston instilled in her grandson a lasting sense of racial pride. In his autobiography The Big Seahe wrote: "I was unhappy for a long time, and very lonesome, living with my grandmother.

Then it was that books began to happen to me, and I began to believe in nothing but books and the wonderful world in books—where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas. After the death of his grandmother, Hughes went to live with family friends, James and Auntie Mary Reed, for two years.

Later, Hughes lived again with his mother Carrie in Lincoln, Illinois. She had remarried when he was an adolescent. The family moved to the Fairfax neighborhood of ClevelandOhiowhere he attended Central High School [ 16 ] and was taught by Helen Maria Chesnuttwhom he found inspiring. His writing experiments began when he was young. While in grammar school in Lincoln, Hughes was elected class poet.

He stated that in retrospect he thought it was because of the stereotype about African Americans having rhythm. I was a victim of a stereotype. There were only two of us Negro kids in the whole class and our English teacher was always stressing the importance of rhythm in poetry. Well, everyone knows, except us, that all Negroes have rhythm, so they elected me as class poet.

During high school in Cleveland, Hughes wrote for the school newspaper, edited the yearbook, and began to write his first short stories, poetry, [ 20 ] and dramatic plays. His first piece of jazz poetry, "When Sue Wears Red", was written while he was in high school. Hughes had a very poor relationship with his father, whom he seldom saw when a child.

He lived briefly with his father in Mexico in Upon graduating from high school in JuneHughes returned to Mexico to live with his father, hoping to convince him to support his plan to attend Columbia University. Hughes later said that, prior to arriving in Mexico, "I had been thinking about my father and his strange dislike of his own people.

I didn't understand it, because I was a Negro, and I liked Negroes very much. He was willing to provide financial assistance to his son on these grounds, but did not support his desire to be a writer. Eventually, Hughes and his father came to a compromise: Hughes would study engineering, so long as he could attend Columbia. His tuition provided, Hughes left his father after more than a year.

He published poetry in the Columbia Daily Spectator under a pen name. He was denied a room on campus because he was black. Hughes worked at various odd jobs before serving a brief tenure as a crewman aboard the S. Malone inspending six months traveling to West Africa and Europe. Malone for a temporary stay in Paris. During his time in England in the early s, Hughes became part of the black expatriate community.

In Novemberhe returned to the U. After assorted odd jobs, he gained white-collar employment in as a personal assistant to historian Carter G. As the work demands limited his time for writing, Hughes quit the position to work as a busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel. Hughes's earlier work had been published in magazines and was about to be collected into his first book of poetry when he encountered poet Vachel Lindsaywith whom he shared some poems.

Impressed, Lindsay publicized his discovery of a new black poet. The following year, Hughes enrolled in Lincoln Universitya historically black university in Chester County, Pennsylvania. He joined the Omega Psi Phi fraternity. After Hughes earned a B. Except for travels to the Soviet Union and parts of the Caribbeanhe lived in Harlem as his primary home for the remainder of his life.

During the s, he became a resident of Westfield, New Jersey for a time, sponsored by his patron Charlotte Osgood Mason. Some academics and biographers believe that Hughes was homosexual and included homosexual codes in many of his poems, as did Walt Whitmanwho, Hughes said, influenced his poetry. Hughes's story "Blessed Assurance" deals with a father's anger over his son's effeminacy and "queerness".

West, author of the Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissancecontends that his homosexual love of black men is evidenced in a number of reported unpublished poems to an alleged black male lover. However, Arnold RampersadHughes' primary biographer, concludes that the author was probably asexual and passive in his sexual relationships rather than homosexual, [ 45 ] despite noting that he exhibited a preference for African-American men in his work and life, finding them "sexually fascinating".

My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln — went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy — bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

Except for McKay, they worked together also to create the short-lived magazine Fire!! Devoted to Younger Negro Artists. Hughes and his contemporaries had different goals and aspirations than the black middle class. Hughes and his fellows tried to depict the "low-life" in their art, that is, the real lives of blacks in the lower social-economic strata.

They criticized the divisions and prejudices within the black community based on skin color. The younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly, too. The tom-tom cries, and the tom-tom laughs.

If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain free within ourselves. His poetry and fiction portrayed the lives of the working-class blacks in America, lives he portrayed as full of struggle, joy, laughter, and music.

Permeating his work is pride in the African-American identity and its diverse culture. He confronted racial stereotypes, protested social conditions, and expanded African America's image of itself; a "people's poet" who sought to reeducate both audience and artist by lifting the theory of the black aesthetic into reality. The night is beautiful, So the faces of my people.

The stars are beautiful, So the eyes of my people Beautiful, also, is the sun. Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people. Hughes stressed a racial consciousness and cultural nationalism devoid of self-hate. His thought united people of African descent and Africa across the globe to encourage pride in their diverse black folk culture and black aesthetic.

Hughes was one of the few prominent black writers to champion racial consciousness as a source of inspiration for black artists. A radical black self-examination was emphasized in the face of European colonialism. At a time before widespread arts grants, Hughes gained the support of private patrons and he was supported for two years prior to publishing this novel.

InHughes and Ellen Winter wrote a pageant to Caroline Decker in an attempt to celebrate her work with the striking coal miners of the Harlan County Warbut it was never performed. It was judged to be a "long, artificial propaganda vehicle too complicated and too cumbersome to be performed. Maxim Lieber became his literary agent, — and — Chambers and Lieber worked in the underground together around — Hughes's first collection of short stories was published in with The Ways of White Folks.

He finished the book at "Ennesfree" a Carmel-by-the-Sea, Californiacottage provided for a year by Noel Sullivan, another patron since Overall, they are marked by a general pessimism about race relations, as well as a sardonic realism.

A biography of langston hughes

InHughes received a Guggenheim Fellowship. The same year that Hughes established his theatre troupe in Los Angeles, he realized an ambition related to films by co-writing the screenplay for Way Down Southco-written with Clarence MuseAfrican-American Hollywood actor and musician. In Hughes wrote the long poem, Madridhis reaction to an assignment to write about black Americans volunteering in the Spanish Civil War.

One example of the book, Madrid 37signed in pencil and annotated as II [Roman numeral two] has appeared on the rare book market. In Chicago, Hughes founded The Skyloft Players inwhich sought to nurture black playwrights and offer theatre "from the black perspective. The column ran for twenty years. Hughes also mentored writer Richard Durham [ 68 ] who would later produce a sequence about Hughes in the radio series Destination Freedom.

Semple, often referred to and spelled "Simple", the everyday black man in Harlem who offered musings on topical issues of the day. Inhe spent three months at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools as a visiting lecturer. He wrote novels, short stories, plays, and poetry, and is also known for his engagement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing, as in his book-length poem Montage of a Dream Deferred Holt, His life and work were enormously important in shaping the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance of the s.

Unlike other notable Black poets of the period, such as Claude McKayJean Toomerand Countee CullenHughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the common experience of Black America. He wanted to tell the stories of his people in ways that reflected their actual culture, including their love of music, laughter, and language, alongside their suffering.

The critic Donald B. During the twenties when most American poets were turning inward, writing obscure and esoteric poetry to an ever decreasing audience of readers, Hughes was turning outward, using language and themes, attitudes and ideas familiar to anyone who had the ability simply to read Until the time of his death, he spread his message humorously—though always seriously—to audiences throughout the country, having read his poetry to more people possibly than any other American poet.

Poet Yusef Komunyakaa first received wide recognition following the publication of Copacetica collection of poems built from colloquial speech which demonstrated his incorporation of jazz influences.