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Transcript

Langston Hughes Reason's for Writing

$1.25

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Vol XCIII, No. 311

Breaking News: Langston Hughes is dead!

Life of Langston Hughes

Died in his home on May 22, 1967

Summery

Why did Hughes write ? (#1)

Racial Equality

Let America be America Again (experts)

Birthdate: February 1, 1902

Birthplace: Joplin, Missouri

Birthname: James Mercer Langston Hughes

  • Was raised by his grandmother until she died
  • Moved in with his mom and moved to Cleveland, Ohio
  • First publication was "The Negro Speaks of Rivers
  • Attended Columbia University for a year
  • Publications:
  • The Weary Blues, 1926
  • Not without Laughter, 1929
  • The Big Sea, 1940

Hughes uses lines 19-22 to say that the minorities are not being treated as equals. He emphasizes how the people listed in lines 19-22 are shut out and not treated as Americans.

Hughes then goes on to say that the minorities listed in 19-22 have fought for their rights to be treated as Americans, but not result.

"The poor white, fooled and pushed apart

The negro bearing slavery’s scares

The red man driven from the land

The immigrant clutching the hope I seek.(19-22)"

“whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain”

(There's never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this 'homeland of the free'.)

Why did Hughes write? (#3)

Why did Hughes write (#2)

Teach to keep moving forward

To voice his dream

As I Grew Older (excerpt)

Life for me ain't been no crystal Stair

It’s had tacks in it,

And splinters,

And boards torn up,

And the places with no carpet on the floor—

Bare.(2-7)

My hands!

My dark hands!

Break through the wall!

Find my dream!

Help me to shatter this darkness,

To smash this night,

To break this shadow

Into a thousand lights of sun,

Into a thousand whirling dreams

Of sun!(20-29).

  • Hughes uses the first stanza in the poem to show how "Mother" has been through a lot in her life by using the symbol "crystal stair."

  • Mother also tells Son that she's been on rock bottom, but she still kept pushing to make it to where she is now
  • Lastly, Mother tells Son not to give up or "sit on the stairs" because life gets hard.
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