Modern: Langston Hughes

One of the first to address what became the primary concern of African American writers of the 20th Century, raising the sense of dignity and self-worth of African Americans, Hughes was a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920's, the focus of which was to create and sustain art rooted in the real lives of black Americans, as opposed art that tried to accommodate itself to the white world. This change required writers to reinvent/redefine poetry and the poet as black and also to define in words the "black experience" that before then had had little value or voice in American art or culture. Hughes and other writers had to invent a new aesthetic and a new language, and they found the basis for these new forms in the black church, the "new" music of jazz and blues, in the rural life of black people in the south, and in the street life of black people in the urban North. The new black aesthetic developed in its rhythms and sounds a strong "oral" flavor.

The movement of African American writers in the early 20th century broke into two parts: those that felt that poetry should be free of race and politics (represented primarily by Countee Cullen) and those that felt that poetry had to be used to better the condition of the African American people (represented primarily by Hughes).

Hughes' first book, The Weary Blues (1926), used the sounds of rhythms of jazz and blues for its forms and the street life of Harlem for its subject, and sought to forge the beginnings of the black aesthetic. Hughes felt that the blues contained the essence of the black response to life in America: a vehicle for transforming misery, anger, sorrow, fear, and despair into hope and faith, leavened with a deep vein of humor, that his people would endure and prevail. Hughes sought not merely to lift up his race, but also to restructure society to properly value black art, through different from white art. Hughes's characters and their experiences are presented as representative of black people's hardships and sufferings rather than as individualized portrayals, which would be left to later black writers.

Classic definitions of Modernism, which is often seen as a white, male movement, don't comfortably fit the experience of black writers -- as they don't comfortably fit most women writers. But the fault is in the definition, not the writers or the literature. Hughes and other black writers were "modern," in that they gave voice to the particular way in which African American people experienced the forces of modern life in American society: alienation, isolation, fragmentation, disillusionment, etc. Modernism for black writers and black people was not an intellectual phenomenon, but a way of life. In order to give this way of life a voice, black writers had to "make it new," by experimenting with new styles, new language, new forms that anticipated postmodern pluralism and multiculturalism and art as a political force.

• When high modernism was happening, it was primarily white males
• Women weren't permitted to be full members of the movement
• Hughes is another special case (with women) because he's black - marginalized - forced into real of virtually insignificance
• encharged in 1920's as spokesman for African American voice
• Almost had to invent new language & forms
• Invented 1st legit African American Voice
• used sounds & rhythms of jazz & blues contained voice of true African American
• Voice of misery, sorrow, anger, and despair into hope
• wanted to restructure society to view black art as worth while
• Modernism wasn't intellectual movement; but way of life
• blacks still lynched from 1920's to 1940's

Essay: "Negro Artist & Racial Mountain"

• be aware of what you're fighting and fighting for.

• "Dream Boogie"
• jazzbeat
• riffing on slave song in which you hear despair, grief - du Bois & Douglass
• Underneath
• On surface, it's happy
• Beat and "beat"
• Double Consciousness
• Described an individual whose identity is divided into several facets