Essays on Langston Hughes

February 1, 1902, Joplin, Missouri, United States

May 22, 1967, Stuyvesant Polyclinic

Poet, Columnist, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist

• "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up Like a raisin in the sun?... Or does it explode?"
• "I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers."
• "Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly."

February 1, 1901 – May 22, 1967

Langston Hughes was an American writer who was an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance and made the African American experience the subject of his writings, which ranged from poetry and plays to novels and newspaper columns.

“Dream Variation”, “Fine Clothes to the Jew”, “Harlem”, “Mule Bone”, “Not Without Laughter”, “One-Way Ticket”, “The Panther and the Lash”, “The Big Sea”, “The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes”, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”, “The Weary Blues”

Hughes, like others active in the Harlem Renaissance, had a strong sense of racial pride. Through his poetry, novels, plays, essays, and children's books, he promoted equality, condemned racism and injustice, and celebrated African American culture, humor, and spirituality.

One of the earliest innovators of the literary art form called jazz poetry, Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. He famously wrote about the period that "the Negro was in vogue", which was later paraphrased as "when Harlem was in vogue."

“Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.”
“I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.”
“...the only way to get a thing done is to start to do it, then keep on doing it, and finally you'll finish it,....”