African American Culture In Langston Hughes's Mother To Son

The Harlem Renaissance depicted a time in the United States of celebration of the African American culture. Of these voices, black artist Langston Hughes emerged as a poet who found his name in history, not only for his African American works but his raw interpretation of the culture. Only at the age of 21-years old, Langston Hughes produced “Mother to Son” to represent the familial relationship in a black household. Hughes incorporates deep contrasts in the subject’s life through literary comparisons with descriptive language while connecting the whole story with a distinct form of language structure.
Hughes has the mother in the poem express her wishes for her son through a single metaphor: a staircase. The second line introduces the “crystal stair.” This establishes the idea of a crystal, a material that is smooth, clear, and beautiful. In that same line, the mother tells that her life has not been crystal-like. To emphasize the comparison, the following five lines lists what her life has been …show more content…
Hughes has been criticized for his depiction of the African American culture, but this poem gives light to the struggles of a mother who needs to guide her son. “Mother to Son” embodies this by comparing metaphorical stairs, one stair crystal and brilliant, and the other stair shoddy and dangerous. Hughes uses intricate figurative language to describe not only the stairs but also the mother’s struggles and aspirations. The mother speaks to her son in an intimate language, vernacular, with broken structure and double negatives, giving a truer idea of how mothers give encouragement to sons in the Harlem Renaissance time in the African America culture. Langston Hughes combines his literary skills to create “Mother to Son,” a poetic work that interprets a mother’s advice to her son through comparisons, figurative language, and