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Langston HughesA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
“One of the most promising of the young Negro poets said to me once, ‘I want to be a poet—not a Negro poet,” meaning, I believe, ‘I want to write like a white poet’; meaning subconsciously, ‘I would like to be a white poet’; meaning behind that, ‘I would like to be white.’ And I was sorry the young man said that, for no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself.”
In this opening description of a young Black poet’s desires, Hughes interprets the underlying meaning of the poet’s initial statement, using it to introduce his ideas. Hughes explains to his reader his central argument: Black artists must be unafraid of being themselves. In addition, Hughes is more subtly laying the foundation of one of his other arguments, which is that a large portion of Black people in the US subconsciously “would like to be white,” which is an important tension around Black creativity.
“But this is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America—this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.”
This statement is the thesis of Hughes’s essay, and he argues that Black artists must reach the top of a racial mountain if they are to be authentically successful. One of the most important aspects of this central claim is Hughes’s connection of the “race toward whiteness” with being “as much American as possible.” By explicitly linking being White with being American, Hughes provides context for many of his later points regarding the difficulty of finding “racial individuality.”
“And so the word white comes to be unconsciously a symbol of all virtues. It holds for the children beauty, morality, and money.”
Hughes aims for his reader to understand the intimate connections between Whiteness and other standards of success in US society. He makes this point explicit in order to support his claims about Black creativity.
By Langston Hughes
Children’s Rhymes
Langston Hughes
Cora Unashamed
Langston Hughes
Dreams
Langston Hughes
Harlem
Langston Hughes
I look at the world
Langston Hughes
I, Too
Langston Hughes
Let America Be America Again
Langston Hughes
Me and the Mule
Langston Hughes
Mother to Son
Langston Hughes
Mulatto
Langston Hughes
Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life
Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston
Not Without Laughter
Langston Hughes
Slave on the Block
Langston Hughes
Thank You, M'am
Langston Hughes
The Big Sea
Langston Hughes
Theme for English B
Langston Hughes
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Langston Hughes
The Ways of White Folks
Langston Hughes
The Weary Blues
Langston Hughes
Tired
Langston Hughes
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