How Did Langston Hughes Write The Negro Speaks Of Rivers

Langston Hughes graduated from Central High School in Cleveland in 1920 and spent the following year in Mexico with his father. Around this time, Hughes’s poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” was published in The Crisis magazine and was highly praised. In 1921 Hughes returned to the United States and enrolled at Columbia University, where he studied briefly, and during which time he quickly became a part of Harlem’s burgeoning cultural movement, what is commonly known as the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance influenced future generations of black writers, but it was largely ignored by the literary establishment after it waned in the 1930s. With the advent of the civil rights movement, it again acquired wider recognition. But Hughes dropped …show more content…
During the Harlem Renaissance it was time for a cultural celebration. African Americans had endured centuries of slavery and the struggle for abolition. The end of bondage had not brought the promised land many had envisioned. The Great Migration began because of a “push” and a “pull”. Disenfranchisement and Jim Crow laws led many African Americans to hope for a new life up north. Hate groups and hate crimes cast alarm among African American families of the Deep South. The intent of the movement, however, was not political but aesthetic. Any benefit a burgeoning black contribution to literature might have in defraying racial prejudice was secondary to, as Langston Hughes put it, the “expression of our individual dark-skinned selves.” Writers, actors, artists, and musicians glorified African American traditions, and at the same time created new ones. The most prolific writer of the Harlem Renaissance was Langston Hughes. Hughes casts off the influences of white poets and wrote with the rhythmic meter of blues and jazz. During Langston Hughes movement to Mexico to visit his dad, he was inspired to write the poem about what he went through and how he saw it. Due to this era his soul has become deep and very befriended, “My soul has grown deep like the rivers.” The way Hughes quotes, “bosom turn all golden in the sunset”, is referring to the celebration of the Harlem Renaissance when “Negro life is seizing its first chances for …show more content…
It is also about how collective memory and struggles of a people can impact the individual. The era is during the Harlem Renaissance and the poem is taking place right before it happens. Hughes quotes his feelings before the Harlem took place and how he suffered. “I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young,” this quote is talking about the first human civilization that occurred and it happened in southwest Asia. That quote shows the poet was in Asia during this time and experienced the first civilization. The speaker charts the heritage of black Americans, beginning with the cradle of civilization in the Middle East and ending with references to slavery as seen from the Mississippi River, he traces over four thousand years of history. He tells us that as a result of all that he has seen, heard, done, and witnessed, his soul has grown “deep as rivers.” Rivers have stood the test of time and carry an incredible wisdom as a result. Hughes draws a connection between the rivers and the black community, which he has endured much and carries an equally profound and powerful wisdom. Hughes uses a reverent and reflective tone here to describe the history and struggle of his people. Evidence for this can be found in several elements. First, the fact that he uses simple, straightforward language and sentence structure in the first part of