Hughes, (James Mercer) Langston

(1902–67) poet, writer, playwright, librettist; born in Joplin, Mo. After publishing his first poem, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" (1921), he attended Columbia University for one year (1921), but left, working on a freighter to travel to Africa, living in Paris and Rome, and supporting himself with odd jobs. After his poetry was promoted by Vachel Linday, he attended Lincoln University (1925–29); while there his first book of poems, The Weary Blues (1926), launched his career as a writer. As one of the founders of the cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance—which he practically defined in his essay, "The Negro Artist and the Radical Mountain" (1926)—he was innovative in his use of jazz rhythms and dialect to depict the life of urban blacks in his poetry, stories, and plays. Having provided the lyrics for the musical Street Scene (1947) and the play that inspired the opera Troubled Island (1949), in the 1960s he returned to the stage with works that drew on black gospel music, such as Black Nativity (1961). A prolific writer for four decades—in his later years he completed a two-volume autobiography and edited anthologies and pictorial volumes—he abandoned the Marxism of his youth but never gave up protesting the injustices committed against his fellow African-Americans. Among his most popular creations was Jesse B. Semple, better known as "Simple," a black Everyman featured in the syndicated column he began in 1942 for the Chicago Defender. Because he often employed humor and seldom portrayed or endorsed violent confrontations, he was for some years disregarded as a model by black writers; but by the 1980s he was being reappraised and was newly appreciated as a significant voice of African-Americans.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Hughes, Langston

Born Feb. 1, 1902, in Joplin, Mo.; died May 22, 1967, in New York City. American writer and publicist.

Born into a Negro family, Hughes graduated from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1929. In his early verse (his first work was published in 1925) he sang the praises of simple people, using much folkloric detail. In the 1930’s, Hughes joined the progressive movement; in 1932 and 1933 he visited the USSR, and in 1934 he published A Negro Looks at Soviet Central Asia. The autobiographical novel Not Without Laughter (1930; Russian translation, 1932) is devoted to the life of American Negroes, as is the collection of short stories The Ways of White Folks (1934; Russian translation, 1936). The poetry collection A New Song (1938) is filled with the vision of proletarian internationalism.

Hughes’ works of the 1940’s and 50’s included the important articles about Simple, a folk hero with common sense who cleverly criticizes various aspects of American life. Especially noteworthy for their lyricism and rich poetic form are the collections Shakespeare in Harlem (1942), One Way Ticket (1949), and Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951). His last collection, The Panther and the Lash (1967), includes verses on topical political events. Hughes also wrote the novel Tambourines to Glory (1958) and a number of plays.

In the 1960’s, Hughes took part in the struggle of American Negroes for civil rights, although he criticized extremist nationalistic tendencies.

WORKS

Selected Poems. New York, 1959.
Good Morning, Revolution. New York, 1973.
In Russian translation:
Izbr. slikhi. Moscow, 1964.

REFERENCES

Gilenson, B. “‘Ia tozhe—Amerika’: K 75-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia L. Kh’iuza.” Inostrannaia literatura. 1977, no. 3.
Emanuel, J. Langston Hughes. New York, 1967.
Langston Hughes: Black Genius. New York, 1971.
Dickinson, D. C. A Biobibliography of Langston Hughes. With a foreword by A. Bontemps. Hamden, [Conn.], 1967.

B. A. GILENSON

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References in periodicals archive

Today, black gays and lesbians embrace Langston Hughes as part of their community, although biographer Arnold Rampersad and members of the Hughes family deny that he was gay.

Out, no doubt: today's black gay and lesbian poets proudly proclaim their identities and show their varying talents to an increasingly receptive public. (poetic license)

CORA UNCHAINED: This version of the novella by Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes stars out Broadway star Cherry Jones and Regina Taylor.

television: a la carte

The Life of Langston Hughes: I, Too, Sing America, Vol.

Chronicles of the movement: the greatest hits among the important books that have shaped the record of America's civil rights struggles

Youngblood's protagonist with a passport is named Eden, a young black woman from Alabama who comes to the City of Lights to escape her past and reinvent her future, The year is 1986, and Paris is plagued by terrorism, Amid the threat of bomb blasts, Eden dreams of meeting her literary hero James Baldwin, contemplates a writing career, and spiritually channels the ghosts of Langston Hughes and Josephine Baker, To make ends meet, she finds work as an au pair and then as an artist's model, all the while accumulating a growing list of oddball characters she calls friends.

Visiting Eden

Throughout are images of little boys in bow ties and tiny girls in Easter hats, families massed for a reunion portrait, sisters getting the Holy Ghost at a tent revival and Langston Hughes at his typewriter.

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