Langston Hughe
Biography
James Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in
Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced when he was a small child, and
his father moved to Mexico. He was raised by his grandmother until he
was thirteen, when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his
mother and her husband, eventually settling in Cleveland, Ohio. It was
in Lincoln, Illinois, that Hughes began writing poetry. Following
graduation, he spent a year in Mexico and a year at Columbia University.
During these years, he held odd jobs as an assistant cook, launderer,
and a busboy, and travelled to Africa and Europe working as a seaman. In
November 1924, he moved to Washington, D.C. Hughes first book of poetry,
The Weary Blues, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. He
finished his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania
three years later. In 1930 his first novel, Not Without Laughter,
won the Harmon gold medal for literature.
Hughes, who claimed
Paul Lawrence Dunbar,
Carl Sandburg, and
Walt Whitman as his primary
influences, is particularly known for his insightful, colorful
portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the
sixties. He wrote novels, short stories and plays, as well as poetry,
and is also known for his engagement with the world of jazz and the
influence it had on his writing, as in Montage of a Dream Deferred.
His life and work were enormously important in shaping the artistic
contributions of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Unlike other
notable black poets of the period--Claude
McKay, Jean Toomer, and
Countee Cullen--Hughes refused
to differentiate between his personal experience and the common
experience of black America. He wanted to tell the stories of his people
in ways that reflected their actual culture, including both their
suffering and their love of music, laughter, and language itself.
Langston Hughes died of complications from prostate
cancer in May 22, 1967, in New York. In his memory, his residence at 20
East 127th Street in Harlem, New York City, has been given landmark
status by the New York City Preservation Commission, and East 127th
Street was renamed "Langston Hughes Place."
A Selected Bibliography
Poetry
Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz (1961)
Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (1994)
Dear Lovely Death (1931)
Fields of Wonder (1947)
Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927)
Freedom's Plow (1943)
Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951)
One-Way Ticket (1949)
Scottsboro Limited (1932)
Selected Poems (1959)
Shakespeare in Harlem (1942)
The Dream Keeper and Other Poems (1932)
The Panther and the Lash: Poems of Our Times (1967)
The Weary Blues (1926)
Prose
Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social
Protest Writings by Langston Hughes (1973)
I Wonder as I Wander (1956)
Laughing to Keep From Crying (1952)
Not Without Laughter (1930)
Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van
Vechten, 1925-1964 (2001)
Simple Speaks His Mind (1950)
Simple Stakes a Claim (1957)
Simple Takes a Wife (1953)
Simple's Uncle Sam (1965)
Something in Common and Other Stories (1963)
Tambourines to Glory (1958)
The Arna Bontemps-Langston Hughes Letters (1980)
The Big Sea (1940)
The Langston Hughes Reader (1958)
The Ways of White Folks (1934)
Drama
Black Nativity (1961)
Collected Works of Langston Hughes, vol. 5: The Plays to 1942:
Mulatto to The Sun Do Move (2000)
Don't You Want to Be Free? (1938)
Five Plays by Langston Hughes (1963)
Little Ham (1935)
Mulatto (1935)
Mule Bone (1930)
Simply Heavenly (1957)
Soul Gone Home (1937)
The Political Plays of Langston Hughes (2000)
Poetry in Translation
Cuba Libre (1948)
Gypsy Ballads (1951)
Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral (1957)
Translation
Masters of the Dew (1947)
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April Rain Song
Let the
rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
The rain makes running pools in the gutter
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
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Children's Rhymes
By what
sends
the white kids
I ain't sent:
I know I can't
be President.
What don't bug
them white kids
sure bugs me:
We know everybody
ain't free.
Lies written down
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Dreams
Hold fast
to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
Langston Hughes
