Langston hughes 1 February, 9021day, Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri. My parents divorced from childhood and lived with my grandmother, mother, relatives and friends. 18 years old, working as an English teacher in Mexico. Received secondary education in Central America, 1922 entered Columbia University. 1923 drop out of school. Sailing on an ocean-going cargo ship and arriving at the coast of West Africa. After living in Paris, I worked as a janitor in a nightclub and a chef in a restaurant. After returning to China, I worked as a laundryman and a hotel waiter. Life experience is very rich. During this period, he wrote diligently, published many poems in black newspapers such as Crisis and Opportunity, participated in the harlem renaissance Movement, and began to make his mark in black literary and art circles. 1926 published the first book of poetry, Melancholy Blues. 1929 He entered Lincoln University for further study and obtained his master's degree three years later. Hughes started writing in the era of "harlem renaissance" and was influenced by the "New Black Movement". His early works are characterized by nationalism and aestheticism. The Great Depression in the early 1930s in the United States and the world-famous Scootsboro case accidentally injured the black man and raised his consciousness. 1932 Visit to the Soviet Union. Later, he came to China and claimed to have met Lu Xun. I participated in the Spanish Civil War as a reporter and attended the second international writers' conference when I passed through Paris. By approaching the workers' movement, his position gradually shifted to the revolutionary side. After World War II, his works once weakened the fighting spirit, but soon turned to reality, and he wrote works praising the workers' movement and opposing racial discrimination, such as the poem "New Song", "Let America Be America Again" and the novel "A Simple Proposal". In the early 1950s, when McCarthyism prevailed, Hughes was arraigned. Since then, there has been a tendency for his creation to be artistic for the sake of art.. During this period, he mainly composed jazz poems and humorous sketches, and his masterpiece Ask Your Mom-Twelve Jazz Styles (196 1) explored new forms of poetry and was regarded as one of the avant-garde poems.
He wrote many kinds of literary works and is famous for his poems. He is called "Poet Laureate of Harlem". The main poetry collections are Good Clothes for Jews (1927), Dreamer (1932) and Shakespeare in Harlem (1942). His novel Not Without Laughing (1930) mainly describes the rugged road experienced by a black child in the process of growing up, which embodies the author's early thought of attaching importance to the role of education. His other works include: The Behavior of White People (1934) and The Same Thing and Other Stories (1963); Humorous sketches "Simbel's Truth" (1950) and "Simbel put all your eggs in one basket" (1957), etc. Autobiography "the vast sea" (1940) and "I wander, I wander" (1956). In his later years, he edited many anthologies, short stories and poems of black writers. Most of his excellent poems are included in his own Selected Poems (1965).
Hughes has never left Harlem since he became famous. His works always describe the life of black people (especially the working people at the lower level). His poems draw lessons from black folk music and folk songs, with the rhythm and rhythm of jazz, fresh style and enthusiasm. They are used to express protests against racial discrimination and praise the progress of black people, and have a positive and far-reaching impact on the development of black poetry in the United States and Africa.
Generally speaking, Hughes' literary activities in his life are closely related to the African-American movement in his time and the fate of the majority of blacks. Hughes' works truly and profoundly reflect the social life of African-Americans, pouring out their sufferings, bitterness, joy and hope, and their pursuit and desire for freedom and democracy.
Love one's own nation and be proud of the civilization and dignity of one's own race, which is most fully reflected in his early famous poem "Men in Black Talk about Rivers".
Hughes wrote this poem in one breath while driving to Mexico. He himself said it took "ten minutes to a quarter of an hour". When talking about the writing process of this poem, the poet said that he did not understand his father's thoughts from his "strange dislike" of his compatriots, because "I am black and I like black people very much". Then, the poet talked about the train slowly passing through the iron bridge on the Mississippi River. From this ancient river, he thought of the fate of the black people, President Lincoln personally went down to New Orleans on a raft to abolish slavery, and thought of other rivers of black people's past lives-Congo River, Niger River and Nile River in Africa. This is how poetry was born. After reading the whole poem, it is not difficult to see that the poet described the whole history of civilization from "Pangu opened the sky" to African ancestors until he became African-American. Black people are an ancient race. They worked hard on the earth and made contributions to human history. Although this poem does not directly describe the sufferings and struggles of black people, it can arouse their national pride and pride, arouse their desire for freedom and enhance their confidence in fighting for a better future. This poem is concise, deep and slow, but it contains unfathomable power.
Hughes' poems draw nutrition from black music and folk songs, and integrate the rhythm of jazz into free verse, so his poems are as open, stretched and enthusiastic as jazz. His poetry is fresh in style and profound in artistic conception, with shocking and touching power, which has had a great influence on the development of modern American black literature and African black poetry.
At the same time, he was influenced by American poet walt whitman. Walt whitman's "I Hear American Songs" led Hughes to write "I Sing America, too", which described the status of African-Americans. In the poem, Hughes compares black people to brothers that white people don't like. When guests come, they will go to the kitchen to eat, but they will become stronger silently. One day, they will eat at the table with their white brothers, and at the same time.