Discovering Langston...

Langston Hughes 1902-1967
American Writer, Poet and Essayist

I, too, sing America

By Langston Hughes

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I'll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody'll dare

Say to me,

"Eat in the kitchen,"

Then.

Besides,

They'll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

Reflections: I was introduced to the poetry of Langston Hughes when I was in high school. His poetry resonated with me immediately, because it told of experiences I had either had or knew about as a Black person living in America. He was one of the first Black writers I was introduced to (along with Maya Angelou and a few select others), that wrote passionately about Black life. Langston told tales of struggle and perserverance, strength and faith...and Black pride resonated in his words. Reading his poems opened up a new world to me, because I was writing poetry myself at that early stage and Langston's poetry was different...it didn't generally rhyme. That said to me, wow...you don't have to follow any set structure, form or pattern for a poem to be a poem. It is the poet's choice how of how he or she puts together a particular group of words to create a poetic verse. Finding Langston was a freeing moment for me as a budding writer.

How ironic just several years later, I attended Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the historically Black University that Langston graduated from. I sat in the Langston Hughes Memorial Library. Sadly, while I was a student there for a brief time, I didn't realize the magnitude of those who attended Lincoln University before me paving the way. Yet, I am grateful to share today, via this blog the contributions of Langston Hughes and the impact this great writer had on me and the entire literary world.

Biographical Information: Born in Joplin, Missouri, James Langston Hughes was the great-great-grandson of Charles Henry Langston (brother of John Mercer Langston, the first Black American to be elected to public office). He attended Central High School in Cleveland, Ohio, where he began writing poetry in the eighth grade. As a youth, he dealt with a number of challenges. Growing up poor, he also faced the separation of his parents (his father moved to Mexico, where Hughes would later visit), a matriarchal, church-going education, and an ongoing series of moves that would eventually bring him to New York City in 1921. Langston used some of the money sent by his father and enrolled in Columbia University, where he wrote his first verse, and began to publish in THE CRISIS, the historic magazine of the N.A.A.C.P., founded by W.E.B. DuBois.

Langston Hughes moved to Harlem at the height of its golden era. For the remainder of the decade he would associate with all of Harlem's prominent figures; the artists of the Harlem Renaissance: DuBois, Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, Alain Locke, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Jean Toomer, Arna Bontemps, and Carl Van Vechten. He was hailed as the Negro Poet Laureate. His prolific literary career was launched in 1926 with a volume of jazz poems, THE WEARY BLUES, written for performance with musical accompaniment in the famous Harlem clubs of the era. It captured both the Opportunity Prize and the prestigious Spingarn Award and financed for Hughes the completion of his university education at Lincoln University, PA.A central figure of the Harlem Renaissance, the flowering of African-American culture in 1920's and 30's, Missouri-born Langston Hughes used his poetry, novels, plays, and essays to champion his people and voice his concerns about race and social justice.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

By Langston Hughes

I've known rivers:

I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

flow of human blood in human veins.

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.

I've known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers,

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Among his many poetry titles THE NEGRO MOTHER (1931), THE DREAM KEEPER (1932), and MONTAGE OF A DREAM DEFERRED (1951) argue passionately a belief in human equality, a wish for color-blind brotherhood, and a growing disillusionment with the American dream. His novel TAMBOURINES TO GLORY (1958) appeared as a musical play (1963), and his two volumes of autobiography THE BIG SEA and I WONDER AS I WANDER, together with his essay about his involvement with the N.A.A.C.P. and the Civil Rights Movement, FIGHT FOR FREEDOM, chart Hughes' long commitment to comradeship and equality. He continued to devote his pen to the ideals of his youth, as well as to take an increasing interest in the movement toward Afro-centric values for black Americans. He died in his beloved Harlem on May 22, 1967.

Langston Hughes House

20 East 127th Street, Harlem

Harlem [Dream Deferred]

By Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore-

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over,

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?