Hughes, Langston - Christopher C. DeSantis (essay date Spring 1993)
Christopher C. DeSantis (essay date Spring 1993)
SOURCE: "Rage, Repudiation, and Endurance: Langston Hughes's Radical Writings," in The Langston Hughes Review, Vol. XII, No. 1, Spring, 1993, pp. 31-9.
[In the following essay, DeSantis reveals the ways racial injustice and violence influenced Hughes's writings in the 1930s and 1940s.]
In The Big Sea Langston Hughes laments the close of the 1920s and the first years of the 1930s as the end of the period known as the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural movement of international significance which generated an outpouring of African American art, literature, and criticism. The final chapters of Hughes's autobiography strike a tone of sadness, markedly different from the lively prose describing the writer's early years in vibrant Harlem. Hughes writes: "The generous 1920s were over. And my twenties almost over. I had four hundred dollars and a gold medal." It is fitting that Hughes chose to...
[The entire page is 4386 words long]
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