the life of langston hughes by arnold rampersad

“As we celebrate the hundred-year anniversary of Langston Hughes’s first publication, we have the opportunity to be the caretakers of his deferred dream. “They ask us not only to read them, but to say them out loud, to give a response.” She notes that “a hallmark of Hughes’s work is its connection to jazz and blues.” Thus his poems require participation, she avers. She also talks about the collection of poems in this book: “We see Langston’s righteous rage against injustice alongside love poems and odes…” “He was The People’s Poet – the poet who laughed and cried with us, the poet who boldly penned protest poems and vibrantly celebrated the everydayness of Black life.” She says she believes Langston’s work is timeless “because at the heart of every verse is the subject’s humanity. In his verses I heard my family members, neighbors, and friends.” She writes: “This was the gift of Langston’s poetry. Author Renée Watson explains in the Foreword how important the poetry of Langston Hughes was to her when she was growing up.

Hughes became primarily known for his portrayals of Black life in America. Hughes said he carried with him a copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass with him all of his life, considering it “his main example that poetry could and should be made out of the speech of ordinary Americans.” He was also influenced by the African American writers who formed the heart of the Harlem Renaissance. In 1924 he published his first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, and in 1930 his first novel, Not Without Laughter won the Harmon gold medal for literature. I think he hated himself, too, for being a Negro.” The effect of this on Hughes can be inferred by the ways in which much of Hughes’ poems insisted on the beauty of the African American identity. He didn’t get along with his father, later writing: “My father hated Negroes. Langston Hughes was born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri, and grew up to be, from the 1920s until his death in 1967 – “probably the foremost poet among African Americans” per this collection’s Introduction.

The life of langston hughes by arnold rampersad