Biography-Criticism
Langston Hughes was born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri, but he spent most of his childhood with his grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas after his parents’ divorce.  Hughes moved at age thirteen to live with his mother and stepfather in Lincoln, Illinois and then Cleveland, Ohio.  It was in Cleveland that Hughes attended high school and began writing poetry under the influences of English classes in which he discovered Walt Whitman and Carl Sandburg. 

The summer Hughes graduated from high school, he traveled by train to visit his father, James Hughes, in Toluca, Mexico.  It was on this trip that he composed his most anthologized poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”.  Hughes attended Columbia University for one year as an engineering student at his father’s behest, but quickly grew disenchanted with his education and was lured by the excitement of 1920’s Harlem.  Hughes quickly established himself as a poet and published regularly in Crisis and Opportunity magazines.  He made the acquaintance of other Harlem Renaissance poets and writers, including Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, and W.E.B. DuBois. 

Hughes’ first volume of poetry, The Weary Blues, was published in 1926.  The very next year, he published a more experimental second volume, Fine Clothes to the Jew, which was less well received by the Harlem intelligentsia.  Under the patronage of Charlotte Osgood Mason, Hughes continued his education at Lincoln University and published a novel, Not Without Laughter, in 1930.  Hughes’ college years and Mason’s patronage ended soon after and Hughes soon became involved in the Socialist movement, publishing poetry in the Communist journal New Masses.  During this time, Hughes wrote a play entitled Mulatto that was the longest running play on Broadway written by an African American until Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun opened in 1958.

Following World War II, Hughes began writing a column for the Chicago Defender in which he introduced the character Jesse B. Semple, a vehicle through which Hughes addressed serious racial issues through humor; the “Simple” column ran for more than twenty years. 

Plagued by financial troubles, Hughes continued to write throughout his life. Montage of a Dream Deferred, one of his most well-received volumes of poetry, was published in 1951.  He was soon after referred to as the “Poet Laureate of the Negro Race”.  A lifelong bachelor, Hughes died following abdominal surgery on May 22, 1967.  His funeral was simple and fitting: jazz pianist Randy Weston played the music that had been such a key part of Hughes’ life and poetry. 

Langston Hughes is still considered today to be one of the most innovative, important, and influential African American poets.
 
 

Selected Bibliography

Works by the Author
The Weary Blues, 1926
Fine Clothes to the Jew, 1927
Shakespeare in Harlem, 1942
Ask Your Mama: Twelve Moods for Jazz, 1961
New Negro Poets: U.S.A., ed., 1964
 

Works about the Author
Sundquist, Eric J. “Who Was Langston Hughes?” Commentary 102.6 (1996): 55-59. 

Lowney, John. “Langston Hughes and the  ‘Nonsense’ of Bebop.” American Literature 72.2 (2000): 357-376.

Giaimo, Paul. “Ethnic Outsiders: The Hyper-Ethnicized Narrator in Langston Hughes and Fred L. Gardaphe.” Melus 28.3 (2003): 133-148.

Patterson, Anita. “Jazz, Realism, and the Modern Lyric: The Poetry of Langston Hughes.” Modern Language Quarterly 61.4 (2000): 651-683.

Watts, Eric King. “African American Ethos and Hermeneutical Rhetoric: An Exploration of Alain Locke’s The New Negro.” Quarterly Journal of Speech  88.1 (2002): 19-33.
 
 

Related Links
www.redhotjazz.com/hughes.html
Langston Hughes biography

www.liben.com/Hugheslinks.html
Links to Several Hughes related sites

http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?45442B7C000C0E01
Biography and online poetry

www.nytimes.com/books/01/04/22/specials/hughes.html
Feature Article on Hughes (requires registration)
 

This page was researched and submitted by Elizabeth MacInnes.  Please contact the editor with any questions or suggestions.