I would say most Harlem Renaissance writers used their everyday lives or surrounding culture as the main source of their work. Take, for example, Langston Hughes. Many of his famous poems, like "Harlem" and "Mother to Son," seem to be born out of his personal experiences and his resulting perspective on the world around him, especially in relation to race and being black in the early twentieth century. It's also been said that Hughes was influenced by jazz and blues music in content and form. For example, his poem "The Weary Blue" uses the scenario of a black man singing a blues song to fuel his reflections. In poems like "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," Hughes briefly meditates on the history of African Americans in the United States as well as his connections to African roots.

Other writers of the era similarly used vernacular and personal experience as a source. Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God is a powerful story of a black woman who struggles to define herself in relation to her ancestors and to men in her life. Hurston makes ample use of regional dialect to portray life in Eatonville, Florida. Writers of the era, like Hughes and Hurston, helped to convey the beauty and pain of African American life in great art. The Harlem Renaissance was a movement that championed and celebrated black culture.