Harlem Renaissance - Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes was the biggest literary star of the Harlem Renaissance. He produced a truly astonishing amount of writing in his lifetime: Sixteen books of poetry, twenty plays seven collections of short fiction, and many magazine and newspaper articles.
Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. He died of congestive heart failure, May 22, 1967, in New York City. His parents soon separated, and Hughes was reared mainly by his mother, his maternal grandmother, and a childless couple named Reed. He attended public schools in Kansas and Illinois, graduating from high school in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1920.
Langston Hughes devoted his lengthy and diverse writing career to revealing the attitudes, experiences, and language of everyday black Americans. Hughes rose to prominence during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and was one of the first black writers to infuse his work with colloquial language as well as the structures and rhythms of blues and jazz music.
In the early 1920s Hughes devoted more and more time to his writing, and began what would become a lifelong fascination with travel. After teaching English for a year in Mexico, he moved to New York City and enrolled in Columbia University. There he spent as much time as possible among Harlem's flourishing literary and musical circles and supported himself through a series of odd jobs that included work as a clerk, busboy flower salesman, and deck hand.
In the spring of 1927, Hughes met a wealthy white woman, Charlotte Mason, who became his literary patron and provided him with a steady income while he worked on his first novel, Not without Laughter. During the 1940s Hughes was firmly established as a leading black poet, fiction writer, and playwright. In 1943 he began writing the short fiction for which he would become most famous, the "Simple" tales, which first began appearing in 1943 as a regular column in the Chicago Defender, a black-owned newspaper.
By the time of his death Hughes was widely recognized as the most representative of African-American writers and perhaps the most original of black poets. What set him apart was the deliberate saturation of his work in the primary expressive forms of black mass culture as well as in the typical life experiences of the mass of African-Americans, whom he viewed with near-total love and devotion. Despite his humane interest in other cultures and peoples, he saw blacks as his primary audience.
Works Cited
• Posters information about Langston Hughes
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• "Langston Hughes." Contemporary Black Biography. The Gale Group, Inc, 2006. Answers.com 08 Oct. 2007. http://www.answers.com/topic/langston-hughes-poet-writer
• "Langston Hughes." Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2006. Answers.com 08 Oct. 2007. http://www.answers.com/topic/langston-hughes-poet-writer
• "Langston Hughes." Spotlight. Answers Corporation, 2006. Answers.com 08 Oct. 2007. http://www.answers.com/topic/langston-hughes-poet-writer
Bibliography:
• Faith Berry, Langston Hughes: Before and beyond Harlem (1983); Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, 2 vols. (1986, 1988). Author: Arnold Rampersad
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2 comments:
Sierra,
Undoubtly Langston Hughes is a dynamo of his time who has accomplished a lot. All of our artiles for this topic have a particular person who is Black and did something prominent during the Harlem rennaisance. Many great people lived during that time, onces who we never heard of and have accomplished a lot as well. Is it possible that a lot of Black legends we hear of today, made history just because no one at the time expected a Black person to do something so great and tramendous?
Hi Luisa,
Thank you for your choice of Langston Hughes. It is not only interest to read about him but also what did he go through and accomplish. I think it always encouraging to someone who try to finish their degrees when see successful person like Hughes who also worked different jobs to
support himself during his college year. It also gives some background when we read his poetry on the next assignment for those who did not know him before.
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