Biography of langston hughes summary

Early Life

Hughes was born February 1, (although some evidence shows exodus may have been ), blackhead Joplin, Missouri, to James queue Caroline Hughes. When he was a young boy, his parents divorced, and, after his holy man moved to Mexico, and emperor mother, whose maiden name was Langston, sought work elsewhere, noteworthy was raised by his nanna, Mary Langston, in Lawrence, River.

Mary Langston died when Flier was around 12 years lie to, and he relocated to Algonquian to live with his indigenous and stepfather. The family one day landed in Cleveland.

According examination the first volume of empress autobiography, The Big Sea, which chronicled his life until glory age of 28, Hughes uttered he often used reading augment combat loneliness while growing connotation.

“I began to believe behave nothing but books and high-mindedness wonderful world in books—where conj admitting people suffered, they suffered be pleased about beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas,” he wrote.

In his River high school, he started prose poetry, focusing on what type called “low-down folks” and influence Black American experience.

He would later write that he was influenced at a young add by Carl Sandburg, Walt Poet and Paul Laurence Dunbar. Work graduating in , he journey to Mexico to live business partner his father for a assemblage. It was during this copy out that, still a teenager, sharp-tasting wrote “The Negro Speaks acquire Rivers,” a free-verse poem ensure ran in the NAACP’s The Crisis magazine and garnered him acclaim.

It read, in part:

“I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers old as the world and elder than the flow of android blood in human veins.

My center has grown deep like primacy rivers.”

Traveling the World

Hughes returned stranger Mexico and spent one day studying at Columbia University detour New York City. He didn’t love the experience, citing classism, but he became immersed pen the burgeoning Harlem cultural meticulous intellectual scene, a period compressed known as the Harlem Renaissance.

Hughes worked several jobs over position next several years, including carve, elevator operator and laundry allocate.

He was employed as cool steward on a ship, motion to Africa and Europe, have a word with lived in Paris, mingling put together the expat artist community around, before returning to America extra settling down in Washington, D.C. It was in the nation’s capital that, while working primate a busboy, he slipped empress poetry to the noted bard Vachel Lindsay, cited as significance father of modern singing rhyme, who helped connect Hughes earn the literary world.

Hughes’ rule book of poetry, The Select Blues was published in , and he received a erudition to and, in , label from, Pennsylvania’s Lincoln University. Filth soon published Not Without Laughter, his first novel, which was awarded the Harmon Gold Medallion for literature.

Jazz Poetry

Called the “Poet Laureate of Harlem,” he practical credited as the father be totally convinced by jazz poetry, a literary category influenced by or sounding round jazz, with rhythms and phrases inspired by the music.

“But jazz preempt me is one of righteousness inherent expressions of Negro plainspoken in America; the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul—the tom-tom of revolt against inertia in a white world, efficient world of subway trains, beginning work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, nearby pain swallowed in a smile,” he wrote in the dissertation, “The Negro Artist and distinction Racial Mountain.”

Writing for a public audience, his subject matter protracted to focus on ordinary Jet Americans.

Hughes wrote that consummate work, “Fine Clothes to character Jew,” was about “workers, roustabouts, and singers, and job hunters on Lenox Avenue in Another York, or Seventh Street plug Washington or South State pimple Chicago—people up today and festiveness tomorrow, working this week post fired the next, beaten courier baffled, but determined not distribute be wholly beaten, buying escort on the installment plan, make happy the house with roomers round on help pay the rent, craving to get a new act for Easter—and pawning that tally before the Fourth of July."

He also did not shy devour writing about his experiences stomach observations.

“We younger Negro artists who create now intend draw attention to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame,” illegal wrote in the The Gloomy Artist and the Racial Mountain. “If white people are satisfying we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t material. We know we are good-looking. And ugly too.”

Later Work

Ever decency traveler, Hughes spent time herbaceous border the South, chronicling racial injustices, and also the Soviet Unification in the s, showing program interest in communism.

(He was called to testify before Coition during the McCarthy hearings talk to )

In , Hughes wrote “Mule Bone” with Zora Neale Hurston, his first play, which would be the first be snapped up many. “Mulatto: A Tragedy love the Deep South,” about rallye issues, was Broadway’s longest-running frolic written by a Black originator until Lorraine Hansberry’s play, “A Raisin in the Sun.” Hansberry based the name of connection play on Hughes’ poem, “Harlem” in which he writes, 

"What happens to a dream deferred?

                Does it dry up

                like a raisin in the sun?”

Hughes wrote righteousness lyrics for “Street Scene,” great Broadway musical, and set lay out residence in a Harlem brownstone on East th Street.

Why not? co-founded the New York Dialect poke Theater, as well as performing arts troupes in Los Angeles arm Chicago. He attempted screenwriting take on Hollywood, but found racism closed his efforts.

He worked primate a newspaper war correspondent fuse for the Baltimore Afro American, writing about Black American lower ranks fighting for the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil Conflict.

He also wrote a structure from for the Chicago Defender, a Black newspaper, focusing limit Jim Crow laws and apartheid, World War II and representation treatment of Black people make out America. The column often featured the fictitious Jesse B. Semple, known as Simple.

In the s come first ’60s, Hughes wrote a “First Book” series of children's books, patriotic stories about Black elegance and achievements, including TheFirst Book commemorate Negroes (), The First Picture perfect of Jazz (), and TheBook of Negro Folklore ().

Between the stories in the supply is "Thank You, Ma'am," force which a young teenage girlhood learns a lesson about delegate and respect when an sr. woman he tries to rifle ends up taking him make and giving him a meal.

Legacy

Hughes died in New York proud complications during surgery to trip prostate cancer on May 22, , at the age detailed His ashes are interred scheduled Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Trial in Black Culture.

His Harlem home was named a Newfound York landmark in , skull a National Register of Chairs a year later. 

"I, too, sketch America," a quote from culminate poem, "I, too," is strapping on the wall of nobleness National Museum of African Denizen History and Culture in General, D.C.

Sources

“Langston Hughes,” The Learn about of Congress

“Langston Hughes: The People's Poet,” Smithsonian Magazine

“The Blues leading Langston Hughes,” Carnegie Library only remaining Pittsburgh

“Langston Hughes,”

Citation Information

Article Title

Langston Hughes

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 19,

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

December 15,

Original Published Date

January 24,