Pontificia Universidad Javeriana

American Literature of the 20s

June the 5th of 2014
Final Exam
Rosario Casas
Hernn Camilo vila
THE POETRY OF LANGSTON HUGHES AND ITS INFLUENCE IN THE HISPANIC WORLD
The current text presents the most outstanding and influential aspects of Hughes
poetry for Hispanic world, regarding the task determined as crucial by the poet
himself, that is to say, the affirmation of blackness and the union of black and white
people on the solid ground of the daily working-class struggle (Hughes 1926).
To start with, I would like to refer to the idea that Hughes had about poetry and
what Negro art was about. Hughes deeply trusted poetry as a device to interpret
beauty and above all, beauty of his own people. His poetry was against the desire to
pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little
Negro and as much American as possible (Hughes 1926). In that sense, he wanted
his poetry to be a massive call to Negro artists to put together white and black artists
on a solid ground. I believe this ground, named by Hughes the daily working-class
struggle, is nothing other than the everyday scene where we get along with others.
Real poetry has to obtain this ground, trough the very exercise and doing of poetical
saying.
Hughes poetry is, as we will see, the living example of this belief. Through his
poetry, Hughes was able not only to interpret and rescue the feelings and thoughts of
black people, but to brilliantly reach the heart of many Negro writers around the

world. The Hispanic world was not and exception to his influence. On the contrary, it
absorbed Hughes poetry as a revitalizing aesthetic.
Also, Hughes verse was a vehicle for nationalist feelings in many Latin
American countries, such as Cuba or Brazil, while simultaneously held a widespread anti-imperialist identification message (Kutzinski 2006: 554). However, one of
the main elements of Hughes poetry that granted his poetry a universal aspect,
which permitted Latin American readers and writers feel portrayed, was his capability
of providing multiple point of nonracial identification. Even though his poetry was
imbued with complaints against racism and the savagery of slavery, it offered the
possibility of identification without limiting it to race. Since Hughes shared a common
heritage of slavery, racism and oppression, with writers and people in the Hispanic
world, his poetry was able to retain a message of a global nature.
In his poem I, Too we can see that Hughes manages to create a ground
above the contradictions between culture and politics, where he puts America
inhabitants together in the basis of humanity and a shared heritage:
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
Ill be at the table
When company comes.
Nobodyll dare
Say to me,
Eat in the kitchen,
Then.
Besides,
Theyll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed

I, too, am America.
I think in this poem Hughes subtly expresses that revolutionary solidarity that
many writers attribute him, and that will be reflected in the works of the new breed of
Afro-Hispanic writers and scholars that he will profoundly mark, such as Nicols
Guilln, Nicomedes Santa Cruz, Nelson Estupin Bass, etc, but he is also speaking
universally to humanity. Above all the racial conventions, he is speaking to people
that suffers discrimination and oppression, and in that sense he is stretching his
verse out even more that in a mere revolutionary anti.imprialist sense.
Another of the contributions of his poetry to the Hispanic world is that of
revealing and improving black consciousness, even in a religious sense as he does
in his beautiful Christ in Alabama , stablishing a bridge between Latin America, the
United States and Africa. This success is greatly due to the incorporation of popular
materials into his verse. By adding folk forms and structures used in pregones,
contrapunteos, cantos populares, and all kind of folk representations, Hughes
succeeds in expressing the painful realities of daily living, and by doing that he is
able to empathize with his Latin American counterparts. In Hughes we can see how
black speech and black rhythms shape the authors vision and his message
achieves a largest public: humanity.
For the reasons exposed above, I believe that Hughes is responsible for
raising the statute of black experience and sublimating it to a universal level. By
embracing the humanity of others in his poems, he hoists his concern about the
affirmation of blackness to a broader humanistic level; highlighting beauty of AfroAmerican folk manifestations he arrives to the very core of humanism. This awarded

him such a reputation in the Hispanic world and a valuable influence in those who
would be his literary relatives.
REFERENCES
HUGHES, LANGSTON. (1926). The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain
[http://www.english.illinois.edu]. From
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/hughes/mountain.htm.
JACKSON, RICHARD. (1981). The Shared Vision of Langston Hughes and Black
Hispanic Writers. On Black American Literature Forum Vol.15, N 3. St. Louis:
St. Louis University. 89 92.
KUTZINSKI, VERA.M. (2006). Yo tambin soy Amrica: Langston Hughes Translated.
On American Literary History Vol.18, N3. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
550 578.