The comparison of Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes is interesting, as they were both poets in the Harlem Renaissance yet had immensely different views on their jobs as writers.

Countee Cullen's upbringing and education were vastly different than Langston Hughes's education. Cullen was immensely popular with white academics at the time, and his formal education was shaped by white intellectuals and educators that he often encountered in formal academia. Cullen was therefore successful in both white and black American culture, making him well regarded and also politically well received. Cullen was connected in both the arts and the political sphere. And while Cullen believed in reclaiming African American arts, his writing was such that it transcended being a black man in America.

Langston Hughes, on the other hand, was often panned by critics—both black and white—for the level of violent truth he lended to his writing. Langston Hughes did not believe in trying to show black artists and black culture and society as some enlightened movement. Hughes set about writing poetry to show the truth of how he grew up and all of the good and bad that came with that. Hughes believed that there was beauty even within the horror that the African American community often faced. Hughes was adamant in showing the truth of the African American existence, and while this came with many critics, Hughes was one of the first in the Harlem Renaissance movement to successfully live off of nothing but his writing and lectures.