Langston Hughes Poems

Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer, and columnist. Hughes is known best for his work during the Harlem Renaissance. Langston Hughes as a baby in 1902, photograph Yale University Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript LibraryThe son of Carrie Langston Hughes (a teacher) and her husband, James Nathaniel Hughes, Langston Hughes was born James Mercer Langston Hughes in Joplin, Missouri. After abandoning his family and the later legal dissolution of the marriage, James Hughes left for Cuba, then Mexico, as a consequence of the enduring racism in the United States.[1] After the separation of his parents, young Langston was raised mainly by his grandmother, Mary Langston, as his mother sought employment. Through the black American oral tradition of storytelling, she would instill in the young Langston Hughes a sense of indelible racial pride.[2][3][4] He spent most of childhood in Lawrence, Kansas. After the death of his grandmother, he went to live with family friends, James and Mary Reed, for two years. Due to an unstable early life, his childhood was not an entirely happy one, but it was one that heavily influenced the poet he would become. Later, he lived again with his mother in Lincoln, Illinois, who had remarried when he was still an adolescent, and eventually in Cleveland, Ohio, where he attended high school.


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Poems

Poems Collection - poems, 2021 edition