Langston hughes gay

Langston Hughes & Closeted Poetry

Last week, I told one of my 9th grade students that Langston Hughes was gay. The student stood up, panic-stricken, and pleaded, “Please don’t say something like that, Mr. Jones. That’s not funny.” He paused for a moment, then added. “He’s one of my idols.” None of the other students noticed the conversation, distracted by their own projects & discussions. And the student and I went about our separate ways. I should’ve have turned it into teaching “moment” but I didn’t. The student wasn’t ready, and – frankly – neither was I.

II.

I wouldn’t move so far as to say that I hated Langston Hughes in tall school, but I wasn’t a big fan. His poetry was too plain & too concerned with race. Though I didn’t know the word at the time, I felt that Langston Hughes was passe. Save him for Black History Month & spare me another recitation of Dream Deferred. At least, that’s what I thought at the time.

III.

My sophomore year of college I watched “Brother to Brother” a beautiful independent film inspired by the l

Born February 1, 1902, Langston Hughes, a deeply closeted homosexual man, was an African-American poet, novelist, lecturer, columnist and playwright who became one of the foremost interpreters of racial relationships in the United States. Born in the south, he dropped out of Columbia University to life the world of jazz and nightclubs and went on to become a major component of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. He was one of the innovators of the fresh literary art build called jazz poetry. He worked menial jobs, and was “discovered” as a poet while active as a busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, DC. The story goes that Hughes dropped his poems beside the poet Vachel Lindsay's dinner plate, and Lindsey included several of them in his next poetry reading. Lindsay’s interest and support launched a major career for Hughes.

This event spawned a local chain of restaurants in the Washington, DC area called “Busboys and Poets” (your blogger has enjoyed many evenings there drinking, dining, playing cards, watching films and taking in inhabit shows and poetry readings). Hughes, who went on to become one of the first shadowy authors who could supp

Langston Hughes (1901–1967) was a poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, columnist, and a significant figure of the Harlem Renaissance.

Born in Joplin, Missouri, Hughes was the descendant of enslaved African American women and white slave owners in Kentucky. He attended high school in Cleveland, Ohio, where he wrote his first poetry, short stories, and dramatic plays. After a short time in New York, he spent the early 1920s traveling through West Africa and Europe, living in Paris and England.

Hughes returned to the United States in 1924 and to Harlem after graduating from Lincoln University in 1929. His first poem was published in 1921 in The Crisis and he published his first book of poetry, The Weary Blues in 1926. Hughes’s influential work focused on a racial consciousness devoid of abhor . In 1926, he published what would be considered a manifesto of the Harlem Renaissance in The Nation: “The younger Negro artists who create now mean to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are pretty. And ugly, too. The tom-tom cries, an

Langston Hughes

By Kali Henderson

Langston Hughes was a renowned playwright, novelist, and poet whose work is much celebrated, even today. He was part of the cohort of now-notable writers, jazz musicians, playwrights, and other artists that were the heart of the Harlem Renaissance. “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” Hughes’ first published poem, is certainly one of his best-known poems and a staple in many classrooms from elementary college to university.

Born in Joplin, Missouri on February 1, 1902 to Caroline Mercer Langston and James Nathaniel Hughes, James Mercer Langston Hughes was the only child of this marriage. His father left the family, his marriage, and the U.S. due to the limited economic opportunities for Blacks in the U.S. As a result, Caroline was forced to look for for employment, often in other towns, leaving young Langston in the nurture of her mother, Mary Patterson, in Lawrence, Kansas.

While living with his maternal grandmother, who refused to perform any manual labor or domestic tasks for whites, Langston experienced a lack of many basic necessities, including sufficient sustenance. As an Oberlin College graduate, Mary was very confident and insti