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Langston Hughes – an Impressive Black Poet

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Langston Hughes’s early life was influenced by disruption and restlessness. According to Contemporary Black Biography Volume 4, Hughes was born on February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri; to a prominent black family that extremely conscious of its responsibilities to “The Race”. His father, James Hughes, who studied as a lawyer, had to leave his family because of racial discrimination of an all-white examining board to settle eventually in Mexico, where he became a wealthy businessman. His mother Carrie traveled from city to city in search of better paying jobs. His parents soon divorced thereafter. As a result, Hughes then was raised by his maternal grandmother, Mary Langston in Lawrence, Kansas. After two years after his grandmother’s death in 1912, he lived with a family named the Reeds in Lawrence. Later, in 1914 Hughes follow his mother and stepfather to Lincoln, Illinois then to Cleveland, Ohio. While he attended grammar school in Lincoln, he was elected as class poet. He later began to write his first poems in Cleveland.
Besides three poems above, “Harlem” is also a very famous poem by Langston Hughes. It expresses the dream of having equality of black people, from eating in the same table, using the same restroom, to living in the same area with whites. The poem also demonstrates the frustration of blacks when they got racism. [quotes]. Overall, it gives out the hope and future for blacks. The poem ends by asking a question, “Or does it explode?” as to answer for the world what might happen when blacks undergo too much racism. The poem uses figurative language to expose dreams, foodstuffs and domestic life, and violence and oppression. [quotes]. There are two themes of the poem that can be considered. The first one is about dream and hope of black people. []. The second theme is to provide the plans of them dealing with

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