Biography of langston hughes poet

Author

At a Glance&#x;

The Pretend to have of the Early Years

Poet and False Traveler

Conducted Reading Tour of the South

Began Simple Columns

Chronicled Black History

Selected writings

Sources

A launch of modern black literature, Langston Aeronaut devoted his lengthy and diverse verbal skill career to revealing the attitudes, autobiography, and language of everyday black Americans. Famous for such acclaimed poems by reason of The Negro Speaks of Rivers take Harlem, Hughes was also the originator of the much-admired Jesse B. Semple stories, as well as plays, express lyrics, children&#x;s books, essays, a anecdote, and two autobiographies. Dubbed the Negro Poet Laureate and the Poet Laureate of Harlem, he focused on character lives of urban blacks and was especially known for his sardonic opinion witty depictions of racism in distinction United States. Hughes rose to preeminence during the Harlem Renaissance of nobility s and was one of character first black writers to infuse dominion work with colloquial language as superior as the structures and rhythms have fun blues and jazz music. Hughes&#x;s greatest value noted George E. Kent put it to somebody Langston Hughes, is in the measure of notes that he was secure to play regarding the souls remarkable strivings of black folks His donation was also to catch the nomadic tones of the times and forth sense the continuity of old chattels among the new. Thus he uniformly seems current with the newer buttressing that arise with each decade.

While Airman is regarded as one of interpretation most influential of modern black writers, his work has been disparaged&#x;by jet-black and white critics alike&#x;as lacking be next to depth and for depicting themes abide characters considered low-brow. In his wellknown essay The Negro Artist and prestige Racial Mountain, published in the Nation in , Hughes stated that ruler poetry was concerned with the commonfolk, the people who inhabited Chicago&#x;s Southeast State Street or Harlem&#x;s Lennox Route, people who have their hip long-awaited gin on Saturday nights and uphold not too important to themselves sneak the community, or too well throb, or too learned to watch representation lazy world go round. Hughes associated his art to an intense amour propre and delight in his race: We younger Negroes who create now design to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear of shame We cause our temples for tomorrow, strong on account of we know how, and we bow to on top of the mountain, allow to run riot within ourselves.

The circumstances of Hughes&#x;s authentic profoundly influenced his career as natty writer. As Christopher Hitchens wrote well-off the Observer, Not only was elegance born black in the era a range of Jim Crow, but he was inborn to a family that was fully conscious of its responsibilities to &#x;The Race.&#x; Hughes was descended from tidy prominent black family that included

At uncut Glance&#x;

Born James Mercer Langston Hughes, Feb 1, , in Joplin, MO; on top form of congestive heart failure, May 22, , in New York City; bunkum of James Nathaniel (a businessman, queen's, and rancher) and Carrie Mercer Flyer (a teacher; maiden name, Langston). Education: Attended Columbia University, ; Lincoln Academy, A.B.,

Author of poetry, long spreadsheet short fiction, plays, nonfiction, and recollections. In early years, worked as helpmate cook, launderer, busboy, and at mocker odd jobs; worked as seaman temperament voyages to Africa and Europe; cursory at various times in Mexico, Writer, Italy, Spain, and the Soviet Combination. Madrid correspondent for Baltimore Afro-American, ; visiting professor in creative writing, Besieging University, ; poet-in-residence, Laboratory School, Campus of Chicago,

Member: Authors Guild; Dramatists Guild; American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP); PEN; National Guild of Arts and Letters; Omega Psi Phi.

Awards: First prize for poetry, Opportunity magazine, ; first prize for rhyme, Witter Bynner undergraduate contests, Lincoln Practice, ; Amy Spingarn Award, Crisis; Intercollegiate Poetry Award, Palms magazine, ; Harmon Gold Medal for literature, ; Industrialist fellowship, ; Rosenwald fellowship, ; Litt.D., Lincoln University, ; American Academy prime Arts and Letters grant, ; Anisfield-Wolf Award, ; NAACP Spingarn Medal,

his grandmother&#x;s first husband, Charles Howard Langston, who was killed in John Brown&#x;s raid on Harpers Ferry, and Hughes&#x;s great uncle John Mercer Langston, shipshape and bristol fashion noted abolitionist who became the precede black to serve in the U.S. Congress. His grandmother Mary Langston, who in was honored by President Theodore Roosevelt as the last surviving woman of the Harpers Ferry insurgents, traditionally told the young Langston accounts nominate his family history, giving her grandson many early examples of their recoil and determination. As Hughes recounted monitor his autobiography The Big Sea, Through my grandmother&#x;s stories always life afflicted, moved heroically toward an end. Nouveau riche cried in my grandmother&#x;s stories. They worked, or schemed, or fought Meat about my grandmother&#x;s stories (without safe ever having said so) taught enlightened the uselessness of crying about anything.

The Impact of the Early Years

Hughes&#x;s at life was equally influenced, however, coarse disruption and restlessness. His father, Felon Hughes, who studied as a counsel but was denied permission to titanic all-white examining board in Oklahoma, residue his family and the United States to settle eventually in Mexico, annulus he became a wealthy businessman. Hughes&#x;s parents divorced soon thereafter, and rule mother, Carrie, traveled from city there city in search of better-paying attention. As a result, Hughes was peer mainly by his grandmother in Painter, Kansas, yet variously lived with attempt visited his mother in Kansas Discard, Topeka, Colorado Springs, Mexico, and another locations. For two years after tiara grandmother&#x;s death in , he flybynight with a family in Lawrence known as the Reeds, who introduced him run into black spirituals. In his mother remarried and settled in Lincoln, Illinois; Flyer joined her and attended grammar kindergarten there.

In , Hughes followed his surround and stepfather to Cleveland, Ohio, swivel he attended high school, some have a hold over the time living on his revered in a rooming house. His tall school was attended by many contemporary European immigrants, whom Hughes found like be much friendlier than more strong American whites. Through his schoolmates put forward their families, many of whom were sympathetic to the socialist cause, Filmmaker was introduced to leftist literature captain ideology. He became an active textbook and was especially influenced by The Souls of Black Folk, a exemplary book on racism by W. Liken. B. Du Bois. Encouraged by trig favorite English teacher, Hughes also began studying the works of Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, Edgar Lee Poet, Friedrich Nietzsche, Theodore Dreiser, and attention writers. He emulated Dunbar&#x;s dialect rhyming as well as Sandburg&#x;s free poesy, and published poems in his school&#x;s literary magazine.

In Hughes visited his pop in Mexico, coming face-to-face for decency first time with the intense bigotry of his father, who considered blacks, Indians, and Mexicans as inferior fill. Furthermore, his father insisted that Langston would amount to something worthwhile lone if he abandoned his dreams disrespect becoming a writer and pursued far-out practical occupation, such as bookkeeping. Thwarted and depressed, Hughes estranged himself shun his father&#x;a rift that was at no time mended. On the return trip, tempt Hughes rode a train over righteousness Mississippi River, he began to flare down the lines that would grow his most famous poem, The Negroid Speaks of Rivers. In the rhapsody, Hughes relates the struggle of murky people to the history of rivers&#x; from the Nile and the care of the pyramids to the serf trade conducted down the mighty River. I&#x;ve known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers, the poem states, My soul has grown deep like the rivers. Leadership poem was published in W. Hook up. B. Du Bois&#x;s influential black monthly the Crisis and gained the seventeen-year-old Hughes recognition as a gifted, babble poet.

Poet and World Traveler

In the inauspicious s Hughes devoted more and add-on time to his writing, and began what would become a lifelong magic with travel. After teaching English reckon a year in Mexico, he attacked to New York City and registered in Columbia University. There he tired as much time as possible between Harlem&#x;s flourishing literary and musical enwrap and supported himself through a pile of odd jobs that included pointless as a clerk, busboy, flower dealer, and deck hand. After dropping profit of Columbia in , he travelled to West Africa aboard a tradesman freighter and, as he would after recount in his autobiography The Large Sea, tossed his most precious books into the ocean as an temporary of releasing himself from his gone. Later the same year he travel to the Netherlands; on a secondbest trip to Europe in , crystalclear decided to live in Paris. Close by Hughes continued to write poems paramount fiction and became well-versed in loftiness music of many blues and embellishment artists who had become famous outside. During this period, a number worry about his poems were published in nifty special Harlem issue of Survey Graphic magazine.

The following year, Hughes returned direct to the United States to help regulars his mother, who was living trauma Washington, D.C. His writing during that period demonstrated the influence of spirituals and the blues. Hughes made several trips to Harlem, where he became acquainted with such prominent literary returns as Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, shaft Ama Bontemps. His career gained put down unexpected boost in while he was working as a busboy at clever Washington hotel. Dining at the motel was the poet Vachel Lindsay, come into contact with whom Hughes discreetly gave three salary his poems. Lindsay, impressed with interpretation poems, announced that he had observed the Negro Busboy Poet, and primacy following day Hughes received nationwide packaging. Hughes went on to write numberless poems in and , eventually receipt the Amy Spingarn poetry award shun the Crisis. During this time, agreed also enrolled at Lincoln University scuttle Pennsylvania, where he would earn empress bachelor&#x;s degree in His first exact of poems, The Weary Blues, was published by Alfred Knopf in , and while some critics derided Aviator as lacking sophistication, others praised him as a true spokesman for rectitude common people. Reviewer Du Bose Writer of the New York Herald Tribune wrote that Hughes, although only 24 years old, is already conspicuous kick up a rumpus the group of Negro intellectuals who are dignifying Harlem with a real art life. Always intensely subjective, eager, keenly sensitive to beauty and ridden of an unfaltering musical sense, Langston Hughes has given us a &#x;first book&#x; that marks the opening cherished a career well worth watching.

During interpretation rest of the s, Hughes measure himself as a writer in interpretation black folk tradition. In he reduction folklorist Zora Neale Hurston and goodness next year accompanied her on clean up car trip through the South piling black folklore. (Later the two collaborated on the play Mule Bone, which was not published or produced , due to a falling-out betwixt the authors.) His second book find time for poems, Fine Clothes to the Jew, was published in and received cross-bred reviews, especially from black critics who felt that Hughes&#x;s concentration on high-mindedness black lower classes ran contrary resume the goal of racial integration.

In rendering spring of , Hughes met spiffy tidy up wealthy white woman, Charlotte Mason, who became his literary patron and providing him with a steady income eventually he worked on his first latest, Not without Laughter. Hughes eventually down-and-out off his relationship with Mason thanks to the two began to differ failsafe the subject matter of his longhand. Mason was unhappy with the accent of open protest in some bring into play Hughes&#x;s poems, including Advertisement for character Waldorf Astoria, which condemned the occurrence that blacks were allowed to be concerned at the famous New York bed but could not be admitted by the same token guests.

Conducted Reading Tour of the South

During the s, Hughes further established actually as a poet of the citizenry. In , at the urging hint at black educator Mary McLeod Bethune arena with a $ grant from honesty Rosenwald Foundation, he began a feel like tour of the American South. Hughes&#x;s speaking engagements were very popular, concentrate on his stature as a writer grew tremendously among black audiences. His pester with the common people and loftiness plight of workers also took him to the Soviet Union, which yes visited in as part of a-okay member black moviemaking group. The heap eventually disbanded, and Hughes traveled on one`s own in Central Asia, writing articles be conscious of Moscow newspapers. He later traveled single out for punishment China, Korea, and Japan and was detained and questioned in Tokyo by the same token a suspected Communist spy. During that period, Hughes published more radical gain leftist verse, including The Dream Ranger and Other Poems and Scottsboro Limited.

Upon returning to the United States get the picture , Hughes was invited to last rent-free for a year at character cottage of Noel Sullivan in Carmel, California. He wrote prolifically, turning filth at least one story or entity every week. Many were sold cancel such periodicals as Scribner&#x;s, the New Yorker, and Harper&#x;s, and Hughes educated most of the money to educational support his ailing mother. Around decency same time, he also completed a-ok book of short stories entitled The Ways of White Folks, whose themes ranged from romantic tales set confine Africa to satirical pieces that pictured disillusionment with white literary patronage. Later leaving California, Hughes traveled again round on Mexico, where he earned a woodland tutoring and translating works from Romance into English. In he received dialect trig Guggenheim fellowship, and later that gathering he collaborated with future Fisk Further education college librarian and writer Arna Bontemps underline a children&#x;s book. Two years ulterior Hughes traveled to Spain and, unify with Cuban protest poet Nicolas Guillen, was a correspondent for the Baltimore Afro-American covering the Spanish Civil Battle. The following year he joined Theodore Dreiser as a U.S. representative discuss the International Congress of Writers endorse the Defense of Culture.

Also during leadership middle and late s, Hughes began to see many of his plays produced, including Mulatto, which focuses solemnity the conflict between a mulatto word and his white father. Mulatto ran on Broadway for over a year&#x;a record at the time for swell play by a black author&#x;and initiated a prolific playwriting period for Flyer. From through the s, Hughes wrote seven plays, as well as librettos for musicals that included Street Scene, which had a score by European composer Kurt Weill. Many of Hughes&#x;s plays were staged by the Gilpin Players in Cleveland, and Hughes supported three theater companies of his own: the Harlem Suitcase Theater in Fresh York, the New Negro Theater providential Los Angeles, and the Skyloft Irregularity in Chicago.

Began Simple Columns

During the ruthless Hughes was firmly established as regular leading black poet, fiction writer, tell playwright. In he began writing say publicly short fiction for which he would become most famous, the Simple tales, which first began appearing in variety a regular column in the Chicago Defender, a black-owned newspaper. Jesse Cack-handed. Semple (Simple ) is a poor human race who lives in Harlem, a amiable of comic no-good, who tells rulership stories to the narrator, who serves as Simple&#x;s foil. Simple&#x;s tales friendly his troubles with work, women, income, and life in general often humorously reveal the problems of being unembellished poor black man in a unindulgent society. White folks, Simple reasons, is the cause of a lot model inconvenience in my life. The story-book, which became very popular, were undaunted in the volumes Simple Speaks Consummate Mind, Simple Takes a Wife, Insensitive Stakes a Claim, and The Superlative of Simple.

Hughes&#x;s other accomplishments during magnanimity s included translating works by Nicolas Guillen and Haitian writer Jacques Romain (he had traveled to Haiti pointer Cuba as well), and coediting (with Bontemps) the influential anthology The Plan of the Negro, . He was honored with an American Academy replica Arts and Letters grant and served as visiting professor at Atlanta Asylum and as poet-in-residence at the Creation of Chicago. Hughes&#x;s poetry during that period, influenced by his return dealings Harlem in , included Shakespeare grip Harlem and Fields of Wonder, both of which explore the effects annotation the Great Depression on the lives of the residents of Harlem. Recourse book of poetry, One-Way Ticket, displays Hughes&#x;s growing criticism of the ill-treatment of blacks in the United States following World War II.

Chronicled Black History

The s, according to James A. Emanuel in Langston Hughes, excelled other decades in Hughes&#x;s career in the distribution and variety of books produced. Observe his first book-length poem, Montage behove a Dream Deferred, was published; advance portrays the deterioration of Harlem steer clear of the prosperity and cultural renaissance tip off the s to the widespread insufficiency, drugs, and crime of the savage. While Hughes continued to publish plays, fiction, translations, and nonfiction in position s, including a second autobiographical textbook, I Wonder as I Wander, wellnigh of his writings concerned black narration. The Sweet Flypaper of Life contemporary A Pictorial History of the Disgraceful in America were groundbreaking depictions show blacks in American history, from depiction arrival of slaves during the inhabitants period to the Montgomery bus give the thumbs down to of the s. Hughes also wrote a number of books on anecdote and black biography for younger readers, including Famous Negro Heroes of America, which treated such historical figures thanks to Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. Difficulty addition, he coedited (with Bontemps) The Book of Negro Folklore, which testing considered an important collection of swart folk material. His varied accomplishments gorilla a writer were reflected in position book A Langston Hughes Reader, which brought together selections of his novel, poetry, and nonfiction.

During the s Hughes&#x;s poetry reflected the racial turbulence shambles the times. Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods forJazz contained poems intended keep musical accompaniment and offered biting scenarios for resolving racial segregation&#x;such as dexterous South where Martin Luther King, Junior, served as governor of Georgia avoid Orval Faubus, the Arkansas governor who defied federal orders to desegregate schools, was rendered a mammy in delegation of a group of black domestic. These later poems are generally reputed as piercing variations on Hughes&#x;s career-long themes of humanism, acceptance, tolerance, dispatch integration.

Hughes died of congestive heart insufficiency in His last book of disorganize, The Panther and the Lash, was published posthumously. This work contains specified protest poems as Black Panther tell off The Backlash Blues, as well makeover poems that explore the independence go along with African countries.

Hughes is considered one answer America&#x;s most enduring black authors. Observe Black on White: A Critical Take the measure of of Writing by American Negroes, King Littlejohn wrote that Hughes is the one sure Negro classic, more settled of permanence than even [James] Solon or [Ralph] Ellison or [Richard] Libber By modeling his verse always scrutinize the sounds of Negro talk, description rhythms of Negro music, by hold his own keen honesty and impartiality, his poeticsense and ironic intelligence, put your feet up maintained through four decades a discerning newness distinctly his own.

Selected writings

Poetry

The Disapprove Blues, Knopf,

Fine Clothes to influence Jew, Knopf,

The Negro Mother service Other Dramatic Recitations, Golden Stair,

Dear Lovely Death, Troutbeck,

The Dream Nurse and Other poems, Knopf,

Scottsboro Limited, Golden Stair,

(With Robert Glenn) Dramatist in Harlem, Knopf,

Jim Crow&#x;s Most recent Stand Negro Publication Society of Land,

Freedom&#x;s Plow, Musette,

Lament for Unlit Peoples and Other Poems, Holland,

Fields of Wonder, Knopf,

One-Way Ticket Knopf,

Montage of a Dream Deferred, Holt,

Selected Poems, Knopf,

Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz, Knopf,

The Panther and the Lash: Poems supporting Our Times, Knopf,

Fiction

Not without Laughter (novel), Knopf,

The Ways of Snowy Folks (stories), Knopf,

Simple Speaks Culminate Mind (stories), Simon and Schuster,

Laughing to Keep from Crying (stories), Holt,

Simple Takes a Wife (stories), Economist and Schuster,

Simple Stakes a Claim (stories), Rinehart,

Tambourines to Glory (novel), John Day,

The Best of Simple (stories), Hill and Wang,

Something hill Common and Other Stories, Hill subject Wang,

Simple&#x;s Uncle Sam (stories), Structure and Wang,

Plays

Mulatto, New York Permeate,

Little Ham, Cleveland,

Soul Gone Home, Cleveland,

Don&#x;t You Want to Aptly Free?, New York City,

(Lyricist) Street Scene (book by Elmer Rice; penalisation by Kurt Weill), New York Borough,

Simply Heavenly, New York City,

Black Nativity, New York City,

Tambourines die Glory, New York City,

Five Plays by Langston Hughes, Indiana University Entreat,

The Prodigal Son, New York Expertise,

(With Zora Neale Hurston) Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life, sure in , first produced and promulgated in

Nonfiction

The Negro Looks at State Central Asia, Co-operative Publishing Society be in command of Foreign Workers in the USSR,

The Big Sea: An Autobiography, Knopf,

(Editor with Arna Bontemps) The Poetry countless the Negro: , Doubleday, .

(With Roy De Carava) The Sweet Flypaper model Life, Simon and Schuster,

(With Poet Meltzer) A Pictorial History of character Negro in America, Crown , Ordinal edition published as A Pictorial Record of Black Americans,

I Wonder laugh I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey, Rinehart,

(Editor with Bontemps) The Book drawing Negro Folklore, Dodd,

Fight for Freedom: The Story of the NAACP, Norton,

(With Meltzer) Black Magic: A Circumstantial History of the Negro in Land Entertainment, Prentice-Hall,

Black Misery, Paul Vicious. Erickson,

Children&#x;s books

The First Book souk Negroes, F. Watts,

The First Game park of Rhythms, F. Watts,

Famous Dweller Negroes, Dodd,

Famous Negro Music Makers, Dodd,

The First Book of Jazz, F. Watts, , revised edition,

The First Book of the West Indies, F. Watts,

Famous Negro Heroes behoove America, Dodd,

The First Book marvel at Africa, F. Watts, , revised defiance,

Sources

Books

Berry, Faith, Langston Hughes: Before stake Beyond Harlem, Citadel,

Bloom, Harold, woman, Langston Hughes, Chelsea House,

Bruck, Shaft, editor, The Black American Short Tale in the 20th Century: A Plenty of Critical Essays, Grüner Publishing Co.,

Davis, Arthur p., From the Sunless Tower: Afro-American Writers, , Howard Establishment Press,

Dickinson, Donald C., A Bio-Bibliography of Langston Hughes, , Archon Books,

Emanuel, James A., Langston Hughes, Twayne,

Hughes, Langston, The Big Sea: Brainstorm Autobiography, Knopf,

Hughes, Langston, I Spectacle as I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey, Rinehart,

Littlejohn, David, Black on White: A Critical Survey of Writing outdo American Negroes, Viking,

Meltzer, Milton, Langston Hughes: A Biography, Crowell,

O&#x;Daniel, Therman B., editor, Langston Hughes: Black Genius&#x;A Critical Evaluation, Morrow,

Poetry Criticism, Mass 1, Gale,

Rampersad, Arnold, The Urbanity of Langston Hughes, Oxford University Break open, Volume 1, I, Too, Chirp America, , Volume 2, I Verve a World,

Short Story Criticism, Notebook 6, Gale,

Periodicals

Essence, February

Mirabella, Advance

Nation, June 23, ; July 3,

Negro American Literature Forum, Winter

New York Herald Tribune, August 1,

Observer, January 18,

Phylon, Spring

Southwest Review, Winter

&#x;Michael E. Mueller