Langston Hughes

Born in 1901 in Joplin, Missouri. He moved around for a while when he was younger. One of his destinations, Lincoln, Illinois is where his writing and love for poetry was born. In 1926 his first book of Poems was published starting off his career. Hughes said he took influence from poets such as Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman. Langston became one of the biggest if not the biggest poet and writer of the Harlem Renaissance. He continued to produce work up until his complications with cancer that ultimately was the end for him in 1967. The poem I chose, Mother to son tells a story of a mother talking to her son about her life, and how she has been trying to be successful and combat racism at the same time. Langston Hughes describes people who are white as climbing up a crystal stair, the path to success is a lot easier for them. However, the mother in Hughes' poem, her road to success has had splinters, darkness, tacks in it, and the boards are torn up. To which compares its self with the nice and beautiful crystal stair, showing a common goal of getting up the stairs but the stairs on the way there are very different.