Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes, born James Mercer Langston Hughes, in Joplin, Missouri on February 1, 1902, was a vital part of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s and was a man who used his unique understanding of what it meant to be a black American throughout his career as a poet, novelist, playwright, and newspaper columnist (Wikipedia, 1). Though a success in terms of his career, Hughes encountered numerous hardships as he developed his own "voice." These hardships included the burden of racism, the separation of his parents, his unhappy relationship with his father, and his own homosexuality which he hid for all of his life (Glbtq.com, 1). This essay will argue that these specific hardships shaped Hughes' poetry and work.

Hughes was raised largely his maternal grandmother after his parents separated. Even then, Hughes was well aware of the racism that permeated the United States. His grandmother was the widow of Lewis Sheridan Leary, one of the men who participated in John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry in