Hughes

3 Pages 758 Words

What was the dream that brought our ancestors to America? It was rebirth, the craving for men to be born again, the yearning for a second chance. With all of these ideas comes the true American dream—freedom. This is the condition in which a man feels like a human being. It is the purpose and consequence of rebirth. Langston Hughes a famous writer and poet, presented ideas in his works that helped to define his perception of the American dream.
In beginning, “Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri.”(The collected poems) His father was James Nathaniel Hughes, a man who studied law but was unable to take the examination for the bar because he was black. His mother was Carrie Hughes, a woman who studied at the University of Kansas in an ongoing struggle to earn a living outside of domestic labor. Langston’s father left home to live in Cuba and then Mexico to free himself from the Jim Crow laws and segregation. Langston Hughes then went to live with his grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas until he was thirteen. His grandmother, Mary Sampson Patterson Leary Langston, was very prominent in the African American community of Lawrence. Unfortunately, she was unable to give Langston the attention he needed and his feelings of hurt and rejection by both his mother and father fueled his growing insecurities.
In the second grade Langston was introduced to books and soon became fascinated with literature. He was able to escape his world into the wonderful world created by authors. At the age of thirteen Hughes went to live with his mother in Lincoln, Illinois and then Cleveland, Ohio where he went to high school. It was in Lincoln that Hughes wrote his first poem after being elected class poet by his fellow classmates. Hughes, the only black student at his school, said that the only reason for his election was that his peers felt that he must have a good sense of rhythm because of the color of his skin. This positio...