Langston Hughes,
“the poet laureate of the Negro race” (Whitaker 70) , is one of the most
influential and widely read poets to come out of America. His words are etched
into the soul of this country. America’s heartbeat thumps to the rhythm of a syncopated
tom-tom and Negro blood pumps viciously through its veins. Hughes, along with
his many cohorts, made Black beautiful: causing a wave of hope to ripple
through the Afro- American Community, whispering in each of their ears I, too, am America. With each passing year
that whisper only grew louder and more forceful: gathering a whirlwind of
momentum. By the time we reached the sixties,
I, too, am America was an outright
yell that rang throughout our country from Atlantic to Pacific. We have
Langston Hughes, and those like him, to thank for that—for the advancement of
our society. He used art to speak unspoken truths, reform and mold his community,
and most importantly bring a sense of pride back into his culture. For these
reasons, I’ve chosen to analyze the various underlying themes in Hughes’
poetry, as well as reference his autobiographical novel the Big Sea and his essay the Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain to
illustrate the influence he’s not only had on the Afro-American community, but
America as a whole.
Negroes,
Sweet and docile,
Meek, humble and kind:
Beware the day
They change their mind! – Langston Hughes
This excerpt from Hughes’s poem Warning! gets at the very essence of his
poetry: an essence cloaked in bitterness,
yet laced with hope. He used art to speak unspoken, and often, unfortunate truths:
a loss of family, identity, dreams, history, love, strength, cohesiveness in
the community, etc. But with truth comes opposition: his efforts and honesty weren’t
always well received. In many ways, he was writing with a doubled edged pen,
unable to please neither the Afro-American community nor the Whites. Hughes
said, “The Negro artist work[ed] against an undertow of sharp criticism and
misunderstanding from his own group and unintentional bribes from whites. ‘Oh, be respectable, write about nice people,
show how good we are,’ [said] the Negroes. ‘Be stereotyped, don’t go too far,
don’t shatter our illusions about you, don’t amuse us too seriously. We will
pay you,’ [said] the whites” (Hughes 1313) . Blacks were afraid
of being portrayed authentically and Whites were afraid of Negro reality and of
the fact that Blacks and Whites may actually be, god-forbid, equal. Unfortunately,
the entire Harlem Renaissance decade was draped in this kind of irony.
Black artists were ropes being tugged by opposing sides: a
dynamic that regularly lead to them compromising their art form to please one
side or the other. It was common for lines like, “I want to be a poet—not a
Negro poet” to spring up from every which way. Many Black artists wanted,
simply, to do art for the sake of art, and not be associated with their
respective community. Langston Hughes was not one of them; he actually despised
that kind of reasoning, arguing not wanting to be a Negro poet meant, “’I want
to write like a white poet’; meaning subconsciously, ‘I would like to be a
white poet’; meaning behind that, ‘I would like to be white’” (Hughes 1311) .
He referred to this idea as the race mountain. The vast disconnect between reality
and what actually is. He felt blacks were conditioned to see Black as ugly and
White as beautiful: Black as wrong and White as right. Hughes made it a point
throughout his writing career to dispel the ignorance imbedding in that kind of
rationale. He stated at the end of Negro
Artist and the Racial Mountain, that ultimately, when it came to the Negro
artist, neither the opinion of Whites nor Blacks mattered. “[They’d] build
[their] temples for tomorrow, strong as [they knew] how, and [they’d] stand on top
of the mountain, free within [themselves]” (Hughes 1314) . The beauty and
strength of the Afro-American community echoed from Hughes’s writing. His words
were therapeutic and helped a great deal toward revitalizing, reforming, and
molding the conflicted identities that were imposed upon his community.
Let America
be the dream the dreamers dreamed —
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
– Langston Hughes
This is
an excerpt from Hughes’s poem Let America
be America again. Throughout the poem, Hughes questions America’s foundation
and the values it’s built upon while also drawing parallels between Blacks and
other racial demographics America’s shamelessly taken advantage of. It’s
painfully apparent reform was necessary: morale teetered near empty. As I said,
one of Hughes’s goals was to dispel the ignorance imbedded within his
community: the ignorance that circled around what’s beautiful and what’s not,
what’s right and what’s wrong. He did so by dedicating a plethora of poems
toward this very effort. Poems that spoke to specific individuals like the
tragic mullato, the southerner new to the north, the dark-skinned girl, the
artist, the mother, the servant, the prostitute . . . he spoke to all these
people. He spoke for all of these
people. “Hughes claimed that 90 percent of his work attempted ‘to explain the
Negro condition in America’” (Wei 3) . And that’s exactly
what he did. By speaking their individual truths and diving into the deepest
recesses of their realities, he gave the Negro a voice. And by doing so, he
infused an unprecedented sense of pride back into Afro-American culture.
Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.
Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--
I,
too, am America. – Langston Hughes
This
is an excerpt from one of Langston Hughes’s better known poems, titled I, Too. Before the Harlem Renaissance
Blacks hadn’t had a sense of pride about themselves since . . . well . . .
Africa. Whites made it a point to beat, strangle, rape, and murder every ounce
of history and identity out of the Afro-American community over the course of
200 years, but what they could never get a hold of was the Negro’s soul. Their
soul kept them singing in the fields. Their soul hooted and hollered in Baptist
Churches. Their soul crooned bluesy ballads at the moon from dusky speakeasies.
Their soul jigged and gyrated to howling horns in sultry songs. And Langston
Hughes captured the essence of their soul with his words. After being held down
for so long, the Afro-American community needed a reminder. Hughes was a part
of that reminder. He reminded them of Rivers. He reminded them of their beauty.
He reminded them of their strength. And most importantly, he reminded them of
their potential. During the Harlem Renaissance some Blacks—Harlemites rather,
“thought the millennium had come . . . the race problem had been solved”
according to Hughes, but he understood, “the ordinary Negroes hadn’t heard of
the Negro Renaissance. And if they had, it hadn’t raised their wages any” (Hughes 1328) . This “ordinary
Negro” was the primary concern of Hughes, and he wouldn’t let the irrationality
of a surprisingly Negro embracing time deter that concern. He understood Black
vogue was just as much a fad as Vaudeville: only Whites could come to Harlem
and get a show for half the price. It was this firm grasp of reality that made
Hughes a true Afro-American pioneer.
I’d like to dedicate some time now
to discussing how Langston Hughes has affected my life in particular. My first
memory of his poetry is reciting Harlem better
known as A Dream Deferred, in high
school. I’ll be honest, initially I wasn’t impressed.
I felt it was simple. The rhythm was choppy and irregular; the rhyming was
elementary . . . I just didn’t like it. But after taking this Afro-American
literature class and being the mature college senior I often portray, I’ve
gained a new found respect for Mr. Hughes. His influence is undeniable. The
majority of his work is flawless. He was just a really powerful artist, and
there’s no denying it. I find myself wanting to write like him, wanting to
affect my reader like him, and I truly feel just by reading his and his many
running mates poetic genius’s, I’ve became a better poet myself. His words will
resonate within me forever.
Langston Hughes died in 1967 before
he had the chance to see how much his work helped change America forever:
before he was able to see his influence flow like the Euphrates through
Afro-American culture. Though we—Afro-Americans—Blacks, or whatever you wish to
call us, have a ways to go toward reaching our full potential, I think Hughes
would be proud. We’ve made great strides as a community, and many of those lunges
forward can be attributed to ideals imbedded within his poetry. He used art to
speak unspoken truths, reform his community, and provide them with a sense of
pride. And I for one would like to thank him because he helped provide me the
freedoms and opportunities I have today. Thank you, Mr. Hughes.
Bibliography
Hughes, Langston. "Various Poems, Negro Artist
and the Racial Mountain, and Big Sea." McKay, Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Nellie Y. The Norton Anthology of African American
Literature. New York, NY and London, England: Norton & Company, 2004.
1291-1314, 1325-1339.
N/A. Veterans of
the Civil Rights Movement. 19 March 2009. 13 December 2009
<http://www.crmvet.org/poetry/fhughes.htm>.
Wei, Xu. "Use of
Dreams in Hughes Poetry." Canadian Social Science (2009): 128-131.
Whitaker, Charles.
"100th BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION OF THE POET LAUREATE OF BLACK AMERICA." Ebony
(2002): 70.
No comments:
Post a Comment