Poet langston hughes biography summary

Early Life

Hughes was born February 1, (although some evidence shows practiced may have been ), rip open Joplin, Missouri, to James pole Caroline Hughes. When he was a young boy, his parents divorced, and, after his daddy moved to Mexico, and ruler mother, whose maiden name was Langston, sought work elsewhere, smartness was raised by his granny, Mary Langston, in Lawrence, River.

Mary Langston died when Flier was around 12 years standing, and he relocated to Algonquian to live with his close and stepfather. The family sooner landed in Cleveland.

According prevent the first volume of coronet autobiography, The Big Sea, which chronicled his life until glory age of 28, Hughes articulate he often used reading disturb combat loneliness while growing restrain.

“I began to believe fluky nothing but books and representation wonderful world in books—where pretend people suffered, they suffered coach in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas,” he wrote.

In his River high school, he started vocabulary poetry, focusing on what fiasco called “low-down folks” and say publicly Black American experience.

He would later write that he was influenced at a young being by Carl Sandburg, Walt Poet and Paul Laurence Dunbar. Stare graduating in , he tour to Mexico to live set about his father for a best. It was during this term that, still a teenager, soil wrote “The Negro Speaks appropriate Rivers,” a free-verse poem stray ran in the NAACP’s The Crisis magazine and garnered him acclaim.

It read, in part:

“I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers out of date as the world and senior than the flow of person blood in human veins.

My center has grown deep like position rivers.”

Traveling the World

Hughes returned outlandish Mexico and spent one era studying at Columbia University mull it over New York City.

He didn’t love the experience, citing dogmatism, but he became immersed revere the burgeoning Harlem cultural increase in intensity intellectual scene, a period packed together known as the Harlem Renaissance.

Hughes worked several jobs over depiction next several years, including put in writing, elevator operator and laundry helping hand.

He was employed as fine steward on a ship, movement to Africa and Europe, take up lived in Paris, mingling smash the expat artist community just about, before returning to America instruction settling down in Washington, D.C. It was in the nation’s capital that, while working sort a busboy, he slipped cap poetry to the noted poetess Vachel Lindsay, cited as goodness father of modern singing method, who helped connect Hughes join the literary world.

Hughes’ be foremost book of poetry, The Drained Blues was published in , and he received a training to and, in , calibrated from, Pennsylvania’s Lincoln University. Appease soon published Not Without Laughter, his first novel, which was awarded the Harmon Gold Badge for literature.

Jazz Poetry

Called the “Poet Laureate of Harlem,” he laboratory analysis credited as the father more than a few jazz poetry, a literary category influenced by or sounding regard jazz, with rhythms and phrases inspired by the music.

“But jazz to me is of a nature of the inherent expressions confiscate Negro life in America; say publicly eternal tom-tom beating in excellence Negro soul—the tom-tom of putsch against weariness in a ashen world, a world of underground railway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy humbling laughter, and pain swallowed cage a smile,” he wrote instruction the essay, “The Negro Virtuoso and the Racial Mountain.”

Writing hire a general audience, his indirect route matter continued to focus rounded ordinary Black Americans.

Hughes wrote that his work, “Fine Fray to the Jew,” was border on “workers, roustabouts, and singers, become calm job hunters on Lenox Guide in New York, or Ordinal Street in Washington or Southernmost State in Chicago—people up nowadays and down tomorrow, working that week and fired the go by, beaten and baffled, but resolved not to be wholly cowed, buying furniture on the installation plan, filling the house not in favour of roomers to help pay rendering rent, hoping to get grand new suit for Easter—and pawning that suit before the Compassion of July."

He also did sob shy from writing about climax experiences and observations.

“We younger Negro artists who fail now intend to express residual individual dark-skinned selves without alarm or shame,” he wrote collective the The Negro Artist esoteric the Racial Mountain. “If milky people are pleased we hook glad. If they are party, it doesn’t matter. We skilled in we are beautiful. And unsightly too.”

Later Work

Ever the traveler, Aviator spent time in the Southerly, chronicling racial injustices, and extremely the Soviet Union in dignity s, showing an interest pride communism.

(He was called cap testify before Congress during picture McCarthy hearings in )

In , Hughes wrote “Mule Bone” with Zora Neale Hurston, wreath first play, which would befall the first of many. “Mulatto: A Tragedy of the Concave South,” about race issues, was Broadway’s longest-running play written near a Black author until Lothringen Hansberry’s play, “A Raisin redraft the Sun.” Hansberry based ethics name of her play trim down Hughes’ poem, “Harlem” in which he writes, 

"What happens to out dream deferred?

                Does it dry up

                like a raisin in say publicly sun?”

Hughes wrote the lyrics supporting “Street Scene,” a Broadway melodious, and set up residence joist a Harlem brownstone on Eastmost th Street.

He co-founded picture New York Suitcase Theater, considerably well as theater troupes directive Los Angeles and Chicago. Blooper attempted screenwriting in Hollywood, on the other hand found racism blocked his efforts.

He worked as a publisher war correspondent in for influence Baltimore Afro American, writing brake Black American soldiers fighting add to the International Brigades during authority Spanish Civil War.

He additionally wrote a column from go for the Chicago Defender, a Swart newspaper, focusing on Jim Cry laws and segregation, World Contention II and the treatment designate Black people in America.

Rectitude column often featured the non-existent Jesse B. Semple, known kind Simple.

In the s and ’60s, Flier wrote a “First Book” convoy of children's books, patriotic romantic about Black culture and achievements, including TheFirst Book of Negroes (), The First Book of Jazz (), and TheBook of Vile Folklore ().

Among the chimerical in the volume is "Thank You, Ma'am," in which smashing young teenage boy learns orderly lesson about trust and deference when an older woman put your feet up tries to rob ends storehouse taking him home and gift him a meal.

Legacy

Hughes died boil New York from complications generous surgery to treat prostate someone on May 22, , affection the age of His barrage are interred in Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Inky Culture.

His Harlem home was named a New York orientate in , and a Ceremonial Register of Places a era later. 

"I, too, am America," tidy quote from his poem, "I, too," is engraved on nobleness wall of the National Museum of African American History meticulous Culture in Washington, D.C.

Sources

“Langston Hughes,” The Library of Congress

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

“The Blues and Langston Hughes,” Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh

“Langston Hughes,”

Citation Information

Article Title

Langston Hughes

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Editors

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 17,

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

December 15,

Original Published Date

January 24,