Life and Work of Langston Hughes Essays -- Hughes Writer Poet Biograph

Life and Work of Langston HughesEarly YearsJames Mercer Langston Hughes was born(p) in Joplin, Missouri, on February 1, 1902, to James Nathaniel Hughes, a lawyer and businessman, and Carrie Mercer (Langston) Hughes, a teacher. The couple separated shortly thereafter. James Hughes was, by his sons account, a ice-cold man who hated blacks (and hated himself for being one), feeling that most of them deserved their ill fortune because of what he considered their ignorance and laziness. Langstons youthful visits to him there, although sometimes for extended periods, were forced and painful. He attended Columbia University in 1921-22, and when he died he, left everything to three elderly women who had cared for him in his last illness, and Langston was not even mentioned in his will.Hughes mother went done protracted separations and reconciliations in her second marriage (she and her son from this marriage would live with him off and on in later courses. He was raised by alternately b y her, by his maternal grandmother, and, after his grandmothers death, by family friends. By the time he was fourteen, he had lived in Joplin Buffalo Cleveland Lawrence, Kansas Mexico City Topeka, Kansas conscientious objector Springs Kansas City and Lincoln, Illinois. In 1915, he was class poet of his grammar-school graduating class in Lincoln. From 1916 to 1920, he attended Central High School in Cleveland, where he was a hint athlete, wrote poetry and short stories (and published many of them in the Central High Monthly), and on his own read such modern poets as Paul Laurence Dunbar, Edgar stiltwind Masters, Vachel Lindsay, and Carl Sandburg. His classmates were for the most part the children of European immigrants, who treated him largely without discrimination and introduced him to leftist political ideas.After graduation in 1920, he went to Mexico to teach English for a year. While on the train to Mexico, he wrote the poem the Negro Speaks of Rivers, which was published in the June 1921 issue of The Crisis, a leading black publication. After his academic year at Columbia, he lived for a year in Harlem, embarked on a six-month voyage as a cabin boy on a merchant freighter bound for West Africa. After its return, he took a job on a ship sailing to Holland. After being robbed on a train in Italy and working his passage back to New York in November of 1924,... ...Works SitedRampersad, Arnold. The Life of Langston Hughes Volume 11902-1941. New York Oxford University Press, 1986Berry, Faith. Langston Hughes Before and Beyond Harlem computed tomography Lawrence Hill and Company Publishers, 1983OJO-ADE, Femi. Of Dreams Deferred Dead Or Alive African Perspectives on African-American Writers Connecticut Greenwood Press, 1996Hatch, James V. Lost plays of the Harlem Renaissance 1920-1940 Michigan Wayne State University Press, 1996Cullen, Countee. carol Dusk New York Haper and Brothers Publishers, 1997Short Poems by Langston HughesHOMESICK BLUESDe railroad nose piecesA sad song in de air.De railroad bridges A sad song in de airEver time de trains passI wants to go somewhereSONG FOR A Cimmerian GIRLWay down South Dixie (break the internality of me)They hung my young black lover To a cross roads treeWay down South in Dixie(break the heart of me)I asked the white lord Jesus What was the use of prayer.Way down in South Dixie (break the heart of me)Love is a naked shadowOn a gnarled and naked treeSUICIDES NOTEThe calm,Cool face of the riverAsked me for a kiss.