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Langston Hughes Research Paper

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Langston Hughes Research Paper
Elsie Hernandez Hernandez#1

Mrs. Lambert

English Pre-AP

088 June 2015

Langston Hughes
“ We negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us beings at the color line.” - Langston Hughes (Brainyquote). Langston Hughes, born in Missouri, was an important literary figure in the Harlem Renaissance (1920s - 1930s). Hughes is known to be a poet, social activist, novelist, playwrighter, and a columnist. He used his poetry to obtain a voice for the African - American culture. “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”, launched his literary career when first enrolled in Columbia University. Langston Hughes, born in Missouri, was one of the most important literary figures during the Harlem Renaissance …show more content…
Langston Hughes was the only child to whom he spent his childhood mainly with his grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas up until he was thirteen years of age. Hughes attended Columbia University in 1921 where his first poem was published, “ A Negro Speaks of Rivers”. Shortly after he dropped out the following year. He gave himself some time off to work. Hughes got a job in 1925 as an assistant with the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. He did not really enjoy it because he felt like he did not have enough time to write, so he left and got himself a job as a "busboy", wiping tables and washing dishes at a hotel. In …show more content…
Like many others, Langston Hughes incorporated Jazz and the Blues into his poems and became mostly known for that. “The Weary Blues,” written in 1925 was first published in the Urban League Magazine for being chosen poem of the year by the magazine. This poem was basically written Walt Whitman style, meaning he had a lot of free verse, wrote freely, but had integrated jazz like blue music into this poem. At the beginning of The Weary Blues, it starts off with a musician playing a slow blues song with his body and soul. Towards the end, it seems to get less exciting as in more depressed wishing to be dead. “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” published in the Crisis Magazine (National Association for the Advancements of Colored People) in 1921, was the beginning
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