Biography of lagston hughes

And ugly, too. The tom-tom cries, and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain free within ourselves. Harlem in the s and '30s offered the Black creative class a sense of pride and possibility.

Hughes worked several jobs over the next several years, including cook, elevator operator and laundry hand. He was employed as a steward on a ship, traveling to Africa and Europe, and lived in Paris, mingling with the expat artist community there, before returning to America and settling down in Washington, D. Writing for a general audience, his subject matter continued to focus on ordinary Black Americans.

Biography of lagston hughes: Langston Hughes - A

We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. Ever the traveler, Hughes spent time in the South, chronicling racial injustices, and also the Soviet Union in the s, showing an interest in communism. Inhe wrote a play that inspired the opera Troubled Island and published yet another anthology of work titled The Poetry of the Negro. It opens:.

Mixing story and song, Tambourines tells the story of two female street preachers in Harlem whose success allows them to open up a church. Hughes told The New York Times he tried to sell the play to producers for a couple of years, eventually adapting the story into a novel—his second. It published in and received acclaim, garnering new interest in a stage production.

Hughes never married, nor was he romantically linked to any of the women in his life. On May 22,Hughes died from complications of prostate cancer at age A tribute to his poetry, his funeral contained little in the way of spoken eulogy but was filled with jazz and blues music. Volumes of his work continue to be published and translated throughout the world.

Langston Hughes High School, completed in and located in Fairburn, Georgia, is named after the poet. The Biography. We have worked as daily newspaper reporters, major national magazine editors, and as editors-in-chief of regional media publications. Among our ranks are book authors and award-winning journalists. Our staff also works with freelance writers, researchers, and other contributors to produce the smart, compelling profiles and articles you see on our site.

Tyler Piccotti joined the Biography. As a newspaper columnist for the Chicago DefenderHughes created "Simple. The sketches of Simple, collected in five volumes, are presented as conversations between an uneducated, African American city dweller, Jesse B. Semple Simpleand an educated but less sensitive African American friend. The sketches that ran in the Defender for twenty-five biographies of lagston hughes are varied in subject and remarkable in their relevance to the universal human condition.

That Simple is a universal man, even though his language, habits, and personality are the result of his particular experiences as an African American man, is a measure of Hughes's genius. Hughes received numerous fellowships scholarshipsawards, and honorary degrees, including the Anisfield-Wolf Award for a book on improving race relations.

He taught creative writing at two universities; had his plays produced on four continents; and made recordings of African American history, music commentary, and his own poetry. His work, some of which was translated into a dozen languages, earned him an international reputation.

Biography of lagston hughes: James Mercer Langston Hughes

Forty-seven volumes bear Hughes's name. He died in New York City on May 22, Cooper, Floyd. New York: Philomel Books, Hughes, Langston. The Big Sea: An Autobiography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Reprint, New York: Hill and Wang, New York: Rinehart, American author Langston Hughesa moving spirit in the artistic ferment of the s often called the Harlem Renaissanceexpressed the mind and spirit of most African Americans for nearly half a century.

Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Mo. 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 In his senior year he was chosen class poet and yearbook editor.

Hughes spent the next year in Mexico with his father, who tried to discourage him from writing. But Hughes's poetry and prose were beginning to appear in the Brownie's Book, a publication for children edited by W. Du Bois, and he was starting work on more ambitious material dealing with adult realities. Hughes returned to America and enrolled at Columbia University ; meanwhile, the Crisis printed several more of his poems.

Biography of lagston hughes: American writer who was

Finding the atmosphere at Columbia uncongenial, Hughes left after a year. He did odd jobs in New York. In he signed on as steward on a freighter. In he spent 6 months in Paris. Most of this verse appeared in African American publications, but Vanity Fair, a magazine popular among middle-and upper-class women, published three poems.

He hoped to earn enough money to return to college, but work as a hotel busboy paid very little, and life in the nation's capital, where class distinctions among African Americans were quite rigid, made him unhappy. He wrote many poems. Meanwhile, Hughes had come to the attention of Carl Van Vechtena white novelist and critic, who arranged publication of Hughes's first volume of verse, The Weary Blues This book projected Hughes's enduring themes, established his style, and suggested the wide range of his poetic talent.

It showed him committed to racial themes—pride in blackness and in his African heritage, the tragic mulatto, the everyday life of African Americans—and democracy and patriotism. Hughes transformed the biography of lagston hughes which such themes generated in many of his African American contemporaries into sharp irony, gentle satire, and humor.

His casual-seeming, folklike style, reflecting the simplicity and the earthy sincerity of his people, was strengthened in his second book, Fine Clothes to the Jew The story deals with an African American boy, Sandy, caught between two worlds and two attitudes. The boy's hardworking, respectability-seeking mother provides a counterpoint to his high-spirited, easy-laughing, footloose father.

The mother is oriented to the middle-class values of the white world; the father believes that fun and laughter are the only virtues worth pursuing. Though the boy's character is blurred, Hughes's attention to details that reveal African American culture in America gives the novel strength. The relative commercial success of his novel inspired Hughes to try making his living as an author.

He took a trip to Soviet Union the next year. He edited five anthologies of African American writing and collaborated with Arna Bontemps on another and on a book for children. As a newspaper columnist, Hughes created "Simple," probably his most enduring character, brought his style to perfection, and solidified his reputation as the "most eloquent spokesman" for African Americans.

The Simple sketches, collected in five volumes, are presented as conversations between an uneducated, African American city dweller, Jesse B. Semple Simpleand an educated but less sensitive African American acquaintance. The sketches, which ran in the Chicago Defender for 25 years, are too varied in subject, too relevant to the universal human condition, and too remarkable in their display of Hughes's best writing for any quick summary.

Hughes received numerous fellowships, awards, and honorary degrees, including the Anisfield-Wolf Award for a book on improving race relations. His work, some of which was translated into a dozen languages, earned him an international reputation unlike any other African American writer except Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison. Rollins, Black Troubadour: Langston Hughes Boone, The Negro Novel in America Historical background is provided by Benjamin O.

James Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, into a family whose ancestors boasted political notables, including a member of John Brown 's antislavery party who fought and died with him at Harper's Ferry. Hughes's parents separated in when his father immigrated to Mexico. Hughes then moved with his mother to Kansas and later to Illinois and Ohio.

He was elected class poet in grade school and graduated from high school with the same honor. Hughes published the first of his signature poems, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," in Crisis magazine inthe same year he enrolled at Columbia University in New York. The Big Seathe first of his two autobiographies, captures Hughes's excitement upon arriving in New York.

In particular, Hughes was energized by the number of black people he saw uptown in Harlem and the thriving culture they were creating. Black intellectuals and artists in New York, like W. They counted themselves, Hughes, and several others as the pioneers of a new black cultural movement, the Harlem Renaissance. Their mission was to harness the post— World War I buoyancy in American culture and channel it into the institutions established to enable black American political, social, and cultural progress.

Black art was booming in New York, and also in Washington, D. But no city could boast a talent more impressive than New York's Langston Hugheswho felt an allegiance to the city that he did not feel for Columbia. The combination of his father's unpredictable financial help and the coldness of the almost exclusively white student body resulted in Hughes dropping out after two semesters.

Hughes found a job on a freighter that took him to western Africa, Paris, and Italy. Inwhile Hughes was in Washington, D. The same year, Hughes enrolled at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, a historically black college, where he graduated in Through the Harlem Renaissance luminary Alain Locke, Hughes secured the support of Charlotte Osgood Mason, a wealthy white widow who both doted on Hughes and tried to control his creative output.

Mason's support enabled Hughes to complete his first novel, Not without Laughterand to collaborate with Zora Neale Hurston on Mule Bonea play they began about black folk culture in Hughes's relationships with Mason and Hurston were similarly intense and suffered dramatic breaks that distressed Hughes substantially. Hughes's secrecy about his sexuality affected his relationships with women and men in multiple ways.

Alain Locke's amorous desires for Hughes led Locke to Paris inwhere he was gently rebuffed by the poet, who was working there at the time. Several scholars speculate that Hurston's thwarted romantic expectations contributed to the deterioration of her friendship with Hughes, who never had a public, long-term, sexual relationship with a man or a woman.

While his autobiographies describe various romantic interactions with women over the years, Hughes's allegiance to gay subcultures is clear. In his two-volume biography of Hughes, Arnold Rampersad describes the frustrating lack of evidence about Hughes's sexuality. Even though he concludes that Hughes was asexual, he points out that several of Hughes's contemporary associates attest to his homosexuality as an open secret during the Harlem Renaissance years and beyond.

Other scholars definitively identify Hughes as gay. Certainly a persistent, popular appreciation of Hughes as a gay icon contributes to a larger debate about what qualifies as evidence when it comes to histories of marginalized peoples, whose unpopular or controversial identities and affinities may have been deliberately obscured. Hughes's career suffered dramatically for his public affiliation with left-wing politics in the s.

Despite his denials and repudiations, Hughes was identified as a Communist and forced to testify before Senator Joseph McCarthy in He was criticized by leftists for accommodating red-baiters, but by exonerating himself, Hughes was able to continue a productive and evolving life as a novelist, playwright, columnist, translator, librettist, and anthologer.

He died of cancer in New York City in Bernard, Emily, ed. New York: Knopf, Langston Hughes February 1, —May 22,poet, dramatist, fiction writer, journalist, and lyricist, was perhaps the biography of lagston hughes versatile of African-American writers and, especially as a poet, the most beloved. Born in Joplin, Missouri, he grew up in Lawrence, Kansas, and Cleveland, Ohio, where he attended biography of lagston hughes school from to In Kansas, his maternal grandmother, an ardent abolitionist whose first husband had died at Harpers Ferry in as a member of John Brown 's band, taught Hughes to revere the cause of social justice.

In high school, Hughes was further influenced by his classmates, many of whom were the children of immigrants from eastern Europe. His first books, The Weary Blues and Fine Clothes to the Jewwere volumes of poetry that reflected both his lively social conscience and his commitment to the vernacular culture of black America, especially its music.

A landmark essay, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" published in the June 23,issue of The Nationin which Hughes called on younger blacks to be proud of their ethnic heritage even as they insisted on artistic freedom, helped establish him as a key figure of the flourishing Harlem Renaissance. Byhowever, Hughes began to sense the coming economic disaster.

And in every block a beggar appeared. In and Hughes toured the South and the West by car, consciously trying to take his poetry to the people; he also publicly protested the treatment of the Scottsboro Boys. Inhe went to the Soviet Union to help make a film about race relations in the United States ; when that venture collapsed, he stayed on for a year.

In andliving in Carmel, California, he wrote the often bitter short stories that comprise The Ways of White Folks While there, he also worked on a play never produced about labor unrest in agricultural California. Inhis tragedy Mulatto opened on Broadway, but Hughes saw little of its profits because of the hostility of its producer, a white man.

Disillusioned, he wrote "Let America Be America Again," a long poem intended as an anthem for the nation during the Depression. Inhe spent three months in Spain as a war correspondent for the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper. Returning to America, he founded the Harlem Suitcase Theatre. However, he soon angered the left by working on a Hollywood film, Way Down Souththat employed many movie stereotypes about black folk in Dixie.

Although Hughes pleaded truthfully that he was destitute, certain critics lambasted him. A greater threat came from the right. Injust before a gala book luncheon in California to mark the appearance of The Big Sea, supporters of an evangelist attacked in Hughes's "Goodbye Christ" forced its organizers to cancel the event. Retreating, Hughes issued a statement renouncing the poem.

His role as a major literary commentator on the ills of capitalism in America was over, just as the Depression itself approached its end. The Life of Langston HughesVol. The Life of Langston Hughes, Vol. Hughes, Langston — gale. Contemporary Black Biography Mueller, Michael. Learn more about citation styles Citation styles Encyclopedia. Hughes, Langston gale.

A rootless childhood Born in in Joplin, Missouri, Hughes was of mixed Native American, French, and African heritage, but his family was identified as black. High school and beyond Between his junior and senior years of high school, Hughes spent an unhappy summer living with his father in Mexico. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleansand I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset. I've known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like rivers. A journey to Africa In the spring ofHughes left New York for a period of sea travel, serving as a cook's assistant on a freighter that would take him to Africa for the first time. It's had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor—Bare. But all the time I'se been a-climbin' on, And reachin' landin's, And turnin' corners, And sometimes goin' in the dark Where there ain't been no light.

So, boy, don't you turn back. Don't you set down on the steps 'Cause you finds it's kinder hard. Don't you fall now— For I'se still goin', honey, I'se still climbin', And life for me ain't been no crystal stair. Another book of poetry, and a new "Godmother" The next year Hughes's second volume of poems was published. Not Without Laughter Hughes intended in Not Without Laughter to portray a typical black family in Kansas, where he had lived as a child, but he did not use his own family as a model.

Then rest at cool evening Beneath a tall tree While night comes on gently, Dark like me— That is my dream! To fling my arms wide In the face of the sun, Dance! Till the quick day is done. Rest at pale evening A tall, slim tree Night coming tenderly Black like me. Two painful breakups By early Hughes had experienced many successes, but he would endure a time of pain and loss as two important relationships ended.

A tour of the South After a period of travel in the southern United States and in Haiti, Hughes applied for a grant from the Rosenwald Foundation a charitable organization that gave writers and other artists money for projects so that he could go on a poetry-reading tour of black colleges throughout the South. Traveling through the Soviet Union Like many young authors and intellectuals of his time, Hughes had become interested in socialism a political system in which the means of producing and distributing goods are shared by the community or owned by the government as a possible answer to social injustice.

An active later life Over the next several decades Hughes continued to write poetry while also pursuing his interest in drama and other genres. Emanuel, James. Langston Hughes.