Langston Hughes

1902 - 1967

Further Resources

Seen on these playlists

The Harlem Renaissance

A period of musical, literary, and cultural proliferation that began in New York’s African-American community during the 1920s and early 1930s. The movement was key to developing a new sense of Black identity and aesthetics as writers, visual artists, and musicians articulated new modes of African-American experience and experimented with artistic forms, modernist techniques, and folk culture. Harlem Renaissance artists and activists also influenced French and Caribbean Négritude and Negrismo movements in addition to laying a foundation for future Black Arts champions like Sonia Sanchez and Amiri Baraka. — Poetry Foundation (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/glossary-terms/detail/harlem-renaissance) Read: The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain (1926) By Langston Hughes (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/essays/detail/69395) Read: The Black Poet as Canon-Maker by Elizabeth Alexander (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/articles/detail/68438)

View playlist

Poetry As Political Expression

“The world I create in writing compensates for what the real world does not give me.” – Gloria E. Anzaldúa “To imagine a language is to imagine a way of life.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein

View playlist