Cross By Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes’s poem, “Cross”, focuses on the conflict of segregation of races that occurred in the United States. The poem is in the first person point of view, in which, the narrator reflects on himself as a young child, as he reaches the adult life. In the short three stanza poem, the speaker summarizes his obstacles in life that were caused by his family. The poem begins as the narrator describes the ethnicity of his parents “My old man’s a white old man and my old mother’s black” (line 1-2) which illustrates that the child is from a mixed ethnicity. In these first two lines, the title of the poem “Cross” is revealed to be that the child is from a mixed breed, ascending from a white father and a black mother. Furthermore, the speaker asserts “if I ever cursed my white old man I take my curses back” (line 3-4) and “If I ever cursed my black old mother and I wished she were in hell, I’m sorry for that evil wish and now I wish her well” (lines 5-8) which displays that as a child, the speaker was bothered and resentful toward his parents because of his mixed heritage, but now, as an adult, he/she regrets those wishes.
Later in the poem, the speaker reveals the death of his parents by claiming “My old man died in a fine big house. My ma died in a shack” (line 9-10). The death of his parents evoke the theme of racism that the poem includes by expressing that, despite death, the family will remain segregated as represented with the contrasting places (“fine big house” and “shack”) that each member died in. Additionally, the theme of racism is further portrayed in the poem when the narrator switches to colloquial diction “ma” that African Americans often spoke