James Mercer Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902, in
Joplin
,
Missouri
. He was neglected by his parents when he was a child. He graduated high
school in
Cleveland
,
Ohio
, in 1920. According to Hughes’s Biography, his schoolmates found him
an attractive “Indian-looking” man. Hughes wrote during the Harlem
Renaissance. Hughes published his first poetry book called The Weary Blues
in 1926. This book contained his signature poem “The Negro Speaks of
Rivers”. He has written 16 books of poetry, 10 fictional stories or novels,
11 plays, 10 nonfiction books or stories, 8 children’s books and, 14 books.
In Hughes’s Contemporary Black Biography, it states that he received
the Amy Spingarn Award, Intercollegiate Poetry Award, the Harmon Gold Medal
for Literature, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rosenwald Fellowship,
American
Academy
of Arts and Letters grant, the Anisfield-Wolf Award, and the NAACP Spingarn
Medal. One of Hughes’s plays, Mulatto, had a long run on Broadway.
Langston Hughes was largely influence by Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, Paul
Laurence Dunbar, and Claude McKay. Hughes died on May 22, 1967, of congestive
heart failure.
By Jordan Mitchell
Hughes's
first book of poetry
Works Cited
"Langston
Hughes." Biographies. Answers Corporation, 2006. Answers.com
03 Feb. 2009. http://www.answers.com/topic/langston-hughes-poet-writer
"Langston
Hughes." Contemporary Black Biography. The Gale Group, Inc, 2006. Answers.com
03 Feb. 2009. http://www.answers.com/topic/langston-hughes-poet-writer