The life and work of Langston Hughes

Running head : The Life and Work of Langston Hughes

The Life and Work of Langston Hughes

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The Life and Work of Langston Hughes

When Langston Hughes at age 21 sailed for Africa the first time , it was accidental : he greatly wanted to escape all the sad memories of his youth at the time . His mother and stepfather were caught in a vise of poverty and the irregular search for better jobs his father , though he was himself Black

, strongly resented Blacks for their social and economic circumstances and pursued wealth with a retribution that left no room for the sentimental predispositions of his son . Langston , for his part , could no longer manage with the racist attitudes on the campus of Columbia University and in the United States generally and he did not enjoy an academic program intended merely to his father . As an act of revolt at the end of his disappointing first year at Columbia Langston Hughes joined a ship that he later exposed went nowhere and jumped at another chance in one that went somewhere--of all places Africa ! The first thing he did once on board was to throw away all his books that had come to represent his despair

Consequently , the fascination with Africa at this stage was not informed by any rehearsed , academic purpose or political consciousness . Hughes was steeped in the fashionable image of Africa that was conventional naive , and romantic . Thus , the Africa perceived by the writer was "wild and lovely " that is , savage and exotic , with its Black and beautiful people , its palm trees , its shining sun and deep rivers . However no sooner did he land on the soil of Africa than reality started to set in Beyond the "bare , pointed breasts of women in the market places " as well as the "rippling muscles of men loading palm oil and cocoa beans and mahogany on ships which brought machinery and tools , canned goods , and Hollywood films " and "took away riches out of the earth , loaded by human hands " Hughes had started a transformation that left a lasting and beneficial relationship with Africa

Like the majority American intellectuals , he was not mainly charmed of the agenda of Marcus Garvey 's return to the motherland though , he found to his dismay that Africans already knew about Garvey and regarded him very highly . Hughes 's initial hard works to identify with Africans were rebuffed : when he asserted he was not a White , he was informed he was not a Black man either . His early political education began when a Kru seaman from Liberia explained the political dynamics of color in Africa the Africans call all colored colonial officers "white men

Certainly , any persons who in any believable way operated in collusion with imperial powers were classified as White , irrespective of the color of their skin . This enlightenment permitted Hughes to reflect more understandingly on a tragic experience of a young man he...