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Essay on langston hughes i to
Critical analysis of langston hughes
The cultural impact of the Harlem Renaissance
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DIFFERENT APPROACHES OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE: HUGHES & HURTSON
Deshawntray Coleman
Rochester College
Different approaches to the Harlem Renaissance When looking at the Harlem Renaissance, readers can expect to discover many artists that pushed the exposure of Jazz, Blues, and African American literature to the American mainstream during the 1920’s – 1930’s. Langston Hughes is associated with the Harlem Renaissance for his literary works and activism. Zora Neale Hurtson, was also a writer associated with the Harlem Renaissance, her works are, to say the least are in contrast to Hughes’s work. I reason that the different styles of writing and thinking, that were contributed to the Harlem Renaissance is in regards to both author’s upbringing/childhood experiences. The two literary compositions that I will be reviewing are I, Too by Langston Hughes, (The Norton Anthology
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She explains how she feels in regards to the color of her skin; she states, “She’s not tragically colored” (The Norton Anthology American Literature, 2013, p. 9, I reason that this is in regards to where she grew up at. Zora grew up in Eatonville, Florida, a town governed by black people; she only saw white people as they passed threw the town heading into another town. Zora states, “I do not always feel colored. Even now I often achieved the unconscious Zora of Eatonville before the Hegira. I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.” (The Norton Anthology American Literature, 2013, p. 942) This passage is in regards to her growing up in an all-black town of three hundred people, furthermore, her feeling the most colored only when she’s around all white people and being the only black person. As a child, she sang and danced for her neighbors and when white people were traveling threw she would wave and
The Harlem Renaissance is the name given to a period at the end of World War I through the mid-30s, in which a group of talented African-Americans managed to produce outstanding work through a cultural, social, and artistic explosion. Also known as the New Negro Movement. It is one of the greatest periods of cultural and intellectual development of a population historically repressed. The Harlem Renaissance was the rebirth of art in the African-American community mostly centering in Harlem, New York, during the 1920s. Jazz, literature, and painting emphasized significantly between the artistic creations of the main components of this impressive movement. It was in this time of great
“Poetry, like jazz, is one of those dazzling diamonds of creative industry that help human beings make sense out of the comedies and tragedies that contextualize our lives” This was said by Aberjhani in the book Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotation from a Life Made Out of Poetry. Poetry during the Harlem Renaissance was the way that African Americans made sense out of everything, good or bad, that “contextualized” their lives. The Harlem Renaissance, also known as the Black Renaissance or New Negro Movement, was a cultural movement among African Americans. It began roughly after the end of World War 1 in 1918. Blacks were considered second class citizens and were treated as such. Frustrated, African Americans moved North to escape Jim Crow laws and for more opportunities. This was known as the Great Migration. They migrated to East St. Louis, Illinois, Chicago 's south side, and Washington, D.C., but another place they migrated to and the main place they focused on in the renaissance is Harlem. The Harlem Renaissance created two goals. “The first was that black authors tried to point out the injustices of racism in American life. The second was to promote a more unified and positive culture among African Americans"(Charles Scribner 's Sons). The Harlem Renaissance is a period
The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement during the 1920s and 1930s, in which African-American art, music and literature flourished. It was significant in many ways, one, because of its success in destroying racist stereotypes and two, to help African-Americans convey their hard lives and the prejudice they experienced. In this era, two distinguished poets are Langston Hughes, who wrote the poem “A Dream Deferred” and Georgia Douglas Johnson who wrote “My Little Dreams”. These two poems address the delayment of justice, but explore it differently, through their dissimilar uses of imagery, tone and diction.
Occurring in the 1920’s and into the 1930’s, the Harlem Renaissance was an important movement for African-Americans all across America. This movement allowed the black culture to be heard and accepted by white citizens. The movement was expressed through art, music, and literature. These things were also the most known, and remembered things of the renaissance. Also this movement, because of some very strong, moving and inspiring people changed political views for African-Americans. Compared to before, The Harlem Renaissance had major effects on America during and after its time.
In the introduction to The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader, David Levering Lewis states the Harlem Renaissance was not a cohesive movement, but a constructed and forced phenomenon that was “institutionally encouraged and directed by leaders of the national civil rights establishment for the paramount purpose of improving race relations.” (Lewis, xiii) However, after researching many influential artists, politicians, and orators of the time, I must disagree. While, yes, the movement of an entire cultural and racial awakening can only be seen as a phenomenon and the movement itself was by no means cohesive, these powerful men and women needed no institutionalized encouragement. Each of their works were their own with diverse ideas and methods, yet somehow, came together to form an interconnected goal within the movement.
1920’s Harlem was a time of contrast and contradiction, on one hand it was a hotbed of crime and vice and on the other it was a time of creativity and rebirth of literature and at this movement’s head was Langston Hughes. Hughes was a torchbearer for the Harlem Renaissance, a literary and musical movement that began in Harlem during the Roaring 20’s that promoted not only African-American culture in the mainstream, but gave African-Americans a sense of identity and pride.
The Harlem Renaissance was a time of racism, injustice, and importance. Somewhere in between the 1920s and 1930s an African American movement occurred in Harlem, New York City. The Harlem Renaissance exalted the unique culture of African-Americans and redefined African-American expression. It was the result of Blacks migrating in the North, mostly Chicago and New York. There were many significant figures, both male and female, that had taken part in the Harlem Renaissance. Ida B. Wells and Langston Hughes exemplify the like and work of this movement.
During the 1920's and 30’s, America went through a period of astonishing artistic creativity, the majority of which was concentrated in one neighborhood of New York City, Harlem. The creators of this period of growth in the arts were African-American writers and other artists. Langston Hughes is considered to be one of the most influential writers of the period know as the Harlem Renaissance. With the use of blues and jazz Hughes managed to express a range of different themes all revolving around the Negro. He played a major role in the Harlem Renaissance, helping to create and express black culture. He also wrote of political views and ideas, racial inequality and his opinion on religion. I believe that Langston Hughes’ poetry helps to capture the era know as the Harlem Renaissance.
Segregation and racism in the 1920s was mundane for the average African American, but as they put that aside they were respected by many whites. The rise of the jazz age was due to the prohibition of alcohol. People were selling alcohol illegally and many African Americans began playing music known as the jazz age. Many white folks came to watch famous African musicians play in secret clubs called the cotton club. In the 1920s when there was prohibition and racism, many African Americans had to deal with discrimination, and segregation between the whites. During that time the Klu Klux Klan population was at an all-time high. Being colored was dangerous because the KKK members were out to hunt for people who weren’t white. Africans were driven out of the South from the whites and also the bot weevil. They were forced to migrate to the north. These areas had poverty. Luckily, African Americans could overcome this hatred by creating a new age called the Harlem Renaissance. Making the North well known for its gargantuan transformation and making it a success. The connection towards Gatsby is that Gatsby had hired a band that played jazz. This came from African Americans as jazz influenced many people throughout the world. The Harlem Renaissance was an era of where African Americans became famous, well known, and respected for their music and literature.
The Harlem Renaissance, a cultural movement that began in the 1920s, brought an excitement and a new found freedom and voice to African-Americans who had been silent and oppressed for a long time. This blossoming of African-American culture in European-American society, particularly in the worlds of art and music, became known as The Harlem Renaissance.
The Harlem Renaissance was a period of cultural explosion. It began in the wake of World War One, flourished until the Great Depression, peaking in Nineteen twenty-eight a year before the beginning of the Depression. The community of Harlem was composed of mainly Negroes (not all of the black population of Harlem was of African descent, so the term African-American would be falsely used in this case) and during this time period they were still considered inferior to the whites. For this reason and other events that took place during the Harlem Renaissance, which I will discuss later in this paper, I have chosen the Athens question, "What does it mean to be a member of a community?"
During the 20th century a unique awakening of mind and spirit, of race consciousness, and
The Harlem Renaissance refers to a prolific period of unique works of African-American expression from about the end of World War I to the beginning of the Great Depression. Although it is most commonly associated with the literary works produced during those years, the Harlem Renaissance was much more than a literary movement; similarly, it was not simply a reaction against and criticism of racism. The Harlem Renaissance inspired, cultivated, and, most importantly, legitimated the very idea of an African-American cultural consciousness. Concerned with a wide range of issues and possessing different interpretations and solutions of these issues affecting the Black population, the writers, artists, performers and musicians of the Harlem Renaissance had one important commonality: "they dealt with Black life from a Black perspective." This included the use of Black folklore in fiction, the use of African-inspired iconography in visual arts, and the introduction of jazz to the North.[i] In order to fully understand the lasting legacies of the Harlem Renaissance, it is important to examine the key events that led to its beginnings as well as the diversity of influences that flourished during its time.
Both Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes were great writers but their attitudes towards their personal experience as an African American differed in many ways. These differences can be attributed to various reasons that range from gender to life experience but even though they had different perceptions regarding the African American experience, they both shared one common goal, racial equality through art. To accurately delve into the minds of the writers’ one must first consider authors background such as their childhood experience, education, as well their early adulthood to truly understand how it affected their writing in terms the similarities and differences of the voice and themes used with the works “How it Feels to be Colored Me” by Hurston and Hughes’ “The Negro Mother”. The importance of these factors directly correlate to how each author came to find their literary inspiration and voice that attributed to their works.
Hughes, Langston. "Harlem." [1951] Literature. 5th ed. Eds. James H. Pickering and Jeffery D. Hoeper. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice, 1027-28.