Introduction
Langston Hughes was one of the most significant writers and poets of the Harlem Renaissance which was an African American artistic movement in the 1920s that celebrated African American life and culture. Hughes’s creativity in writing was influenced by his life in Harlem’s neighborhood in New York, especially during his stint at Columbia University (Brooks, 2015) . Harlem is a primarily African American neighborhood in the city that has shaped careers of many blacks, thus Hughes literary works helped in shaping the political and literary discourse of the American history. Hughes, like other active proponents of the Harlem Renaissance, demonstrated a strong sense of racial pride for the African Americans through most of his literary works (Heise, 2010). Through his works that spanned different literary genres including poetry, plays, short stories, newspaper columns, novels and children’s books, Hughes promoted equality and condemned racism and injustices, particularly against African Americans. However, Hughes celebrated African American humor, culture and spirituality (Carroll, 2005). In this report, the paper discusses the contribution of Langston Hughes in the literary world by covering three components of his life.
Historical/ cultural background of Langston Hughes and his works
Born on February 1, 1902 in Joplin Missouri, James Langston Hughes was primarily raised by his maternal grandmother Mary, who lived in Lawrence Kansas, until she passed on when Hughes was in his early teenage years. After the passing on of his grandmother Hughes moved to live with his mother in Lincoln, Illinois before the family eventually settled in Cleveland, Ohio where he went to high school. It was in high school that Hughes’s writing skills were discovered when he started writing poetry (Hughes, 2015) . His writing talent was discovered by his high school teachers and classmates. He had his first pieces of verse published in the Central High Monthly , a sophisticated school magazine. After graduating from high school, Hughes spent some time with his father in Mexico and it was during this time that he wrote one of his famous poetry works, “The Negro Speaks of rivers.”
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Hughes’s young adult years included a stint of living with his father, a practicing lawyer in Mexico, and a year of study at Columbia University. Hughes also travelled and did an assortment of jobs, including spending some time in Paris, France and working as a busboy in Washington, D.C. Hughes first poetry collection, The Weary Blues, was published in 1926 and received warm criticism for literary intellectuals, particularly African American writers and intellectuals (Brooks, 2015) . He published his second book the following year titled, Fine Clothes to the Jew, which was well received because of its critical perspectives on race relations in American society. However, African American critics did not like the book. For instance, the Chicago Whip characterized the Hughes as “the poet low-rate of Harlem,’ while others called the book a disgrace to the black race. Additionally, others called the book “a return to the dialect tradition” while some stated that it was parading the purported racial defects of the blacks in public.
Hughes graduated from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1929 and two years later he won the Harmon Gold Medal for Literature with his first novel, Not without laughter . It is after this success that Hughes realized that he could make a career in writing. His work majored on the social, political and economic portrayal of the race relations in America and Hughes became increasingly involved in the Leftist politics in the country. Hughes remained an active writer and lecturer as he travelled in and out of United Stated to give literary lectures in different institutions (Hughes, 2015) . He passed away on May 22, 1967 in New York City and was not survived by anybody because he never married.
Hughes placement in the anthology
Langston Hughes earned a place among the greatest poets of all times in America. His literature formed part of the historic Harlem Renaissance Movement (Balshaw, 2000). Harlem Renaissance Movement refers to the artistic, cultural, and social growing of literature concerning race and the place of African Americans in the American society in the early 1920s and 1930s (Carroll, 2005). Hughes’ contribution to the movement was immense through his poetic work that announce to the world that the streets of black America, namely the Harlem neighborhood, were culturally rich, vibrant and fiercely poetic. One of the most iconic features of the Harlem Renaissance was its diversity of literary expression where, between mid-1920s and mid-1930s, about sixteen African American writers published over fifty volumes of poetry and fiction. Furthermore, the Harlem Renaissance appealed to a mixed audience, not just African Americans. Again, it highlighted the social and economic conditions of the black Americans at a time when civil rights debate continued to rage (Heise, 2010).
Despite Hughes prolific contribution in other literary genres, Hughes was known primarily as a poet. Hughes attempted to capture the voices, experiences, spirit and emotions of the African Americans, who sometimes would criticize his works (Stewart, 2015) . However, Hughes chose to identify with the plain black Americans, not because it needed less effort and complication or sophistication but because he found more truth and profound importance in taking that position. Hughes was determined to reflect the everyday lives of the working-class culture and dealt with controversial themes like racism, prostitution, teenage pregnancy, and lynching.
In his works Hughes decided to use several themes, rhythms, and cadences of jazz, blues, and gospel music. However, it is jazz that the poet would base his musical poetic works that sought to highlight the class struggle of the African Americans through the Harlem Renaissance (Hughes, 2015) . In his second book, Fine Clothes to the Jew, which received critical condemnation from African Americans, Hughes recognizes the everyday struggles of the urban black American living in Harlem. He portrays an African American who, in pursuit of the American Dream, leaves behind the overt Deep South oppression only to realize their dreams denied or set aside indefinitely in the North. The struggle is featured again in his 1951 book-long poem, the Montage of a Dream Deferred (Miller, 2015) .
Using his work, Hughes discusses the class realities in racist America. For example, through his most beloved fictional character, Jesse B. Semple (Simply Simple), Hughes portrays a stereotypical poor man in Harlem, a storyteller that was eager to share his tales because of trouble with a white character called Boyd. Semple shared his tribulations with the Boyd just to get a drink (Hughes, 2015) . Through this popular tales of Simple, Hughes offered an astute commentary on the tribulations of what it meant to be a poor black man in a racist society.
Perhaps Hughes’s tales of character Simple were influenced by his father who had been frustrated for being an object of scorn in his native land and rejected by his own people. Indeed, many have argued that Hughes reaction to his father’s flight from the American racial reality drove him to embrace the extra vigor on writing about the cultural and social afflictions of the black man in Harlem neighborhood. It suffices to note that, for instance, Fine Clothes to the Jew, which was misunderstood and had a hostile reception among many people, especially the African Americans, was derived from the residents of Harlem (Balshaw, 2000). Hughes witnessed these people pawn everything, right from their own clothes to the Jewish shops and other stores in Harlem. It is through these experiences that Hughes promoted the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s.
Discussion of the cultural issues raised by Hughes as part of the American Identity
The racial issues that Hughes discusses in his work, particularly during the Harlem Renaissance, remain points of discussions in several literary works. The depiction of Harlem demonstrates that black neighborhoods then and now still struggle with racial realities (Heise, 2010). However, while the overt description has toned down from many literary compositions, the African American culture that Hughes depicts is a reflection of its duality. The duality is characterized by an African American urban experience that consists of the reality of urban African American problem and in contrast with fantasy (Carroll, 2005).
Therefore, the American Identity as we know it today embraces the duality that Hughes and other proponents of the Harlem Renaissance postulated in their literary works. In fantasy, the American Dream encourages many, including non-American that become both legal and illegal immigrants, that everything is possible in the Union Russonello, G. (2016 . However, the reality is different since it is not as many would expect as racial relations have continued to nosedive when one considers the recent racial altercations between white law enforcement agents and perceived African America crime suspects (Vance, 2016). The issue of race and ethnicity in correspondence with social, political and economic positions of the minorities forms the “American Identity,” today thus echoing Hughes depictions in his literary works.
Conclusion
Langston Hughes remains one of the most celebrated literary figures for the American Literature because of his immense contributions and critical perspectives on issues that affected African Americans. While some have criticized him as not having taken an active role in the Civil Rights Movement, his works demonstrates that he was passionate about expressing the struggles of the African Americans and some of the issues he tackled still remain part of the discourse concerning the American Identity.
References
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London: Pluto Press.
Brooks, G. (2015). Langston Hughes, both of. Ethnic American Literature: An Encyclopedia for
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Carroll, A. E. (2005). Word, Image, and the New Negro: Representation and Identity in the
Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Heise, T. (2010). American Literatures Initiative: Urban Underworlds: A Geography of
Twentieth-Century American Literature and Culture . Piscataway: Rutgers University Press.
Hughes, L. (2015). Simple's Uncle Sam: With a New Introduction by Akiba Sullivan Harper .
Hill and Wang.
Hughes, L. (2015). Hughes, Langston. American Countercultures: An Encyclopedia of
Nonconformists, Alternative Lifestyles, and Radical Ideas in US History , 388.
Hughes, L. (2015). The big sea: An autobiography . Hill and Wang.
Miller, R. B. (2015). The Art and Imagination of Langston Hughes . University Press of
Kentucky.
Russonello, G. (2016, July). Race Relations Are at Lowest Point in Obama Presidency, Poll
Finds. Accessed on December 10, 2016 from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/14/us/most-americans-hold-grim-view-of-race-relations-poll-finds.html?_r=0
Stewart, L. (2015). Purity through Nature: A Comparative Analysis of Metaphoric Structures
Linked to Nature in the Poetic Works of John Donne and Langston Hughes.
Vance, J.D. (2016, August). Why Race Relations Got Worse, Accessed on December 10, 2016
from http://www.nationalreview.com/article/439431/race-relations-getting-worse-america-why
