Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

A selective list of online literary criticism for Langston Hughes, favoring signed articles by recognized scholars, articles published in reviewed sources, and web sites that adhere to the MLA Guidelines for Web Sites

main page | African American writers | 20th-century literature | Harlem Renaissance

Literary criticism

Alexander, Elizabeth. "The Black Poet as Canon-Maker: Langston Hughes, New Negro Poets, and American poetry's segregated past." At the Poetry Foundation web site.

Banks, Kimberly. 'Like a Violin for the Wind to Play': Lyrical Approaches to Lynching by Hughes, Du Bois, and Toomer [Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois, Jean Toomer]. African American Review, Fall 2004.

Borden, Anne. "Heroic 'hussies' and 'brilliant queers': genderracial resistance in the works of Langston Hughes." African American Review, Fall, 1994

Chasar, Mike. "The Sounds of Black Laughter and the Harlem Renaissance: Claude McKay, Sterling Brown, Langston Hughes." American Literature; March, 2008.

Dawahare, Anthony. An introduction to Langston Hughes from the American Masters series. Dr. Dawahare writes, "For Langston Hughes, best known as the 'poet laureate' of the Harlem Renaissance, racism is a mindset that blinds both black and white Americans to their common interests in creating a better life."

Giaimo, Paul. "Ethnic outsiders: the hyper-ethnicized narrator in Langston Hughes and Fred L. Gardaphe." Melus, Fall, 2003

Johnson, Dianne, ed. A review of The Collected Works of Langston Hughes: Works for Children and Young Adults: Poetry, Fiction, and Other Writing. Vol. 11 (Univ. of Missouri P, 2003). Reviewed in Melus, Spring, 2005 by R. Baxter Miller

Kim, Daniel Won-gu. "We, Too, Rise with You": Recovering Langston Hughes's African Turn 1954-1960. African American Review, Fall, 2007

Lamb, Robert Paul. "A Little Yellow Bastard Boy": Paternal Rejection, Filial Insistence, and the Triumph of African American Cultural Aesthetics in Langston Hughes's "Mulatto." College Literature, Spring 2008

Maryemma, Graham. "Langston Hughes Centennial, 1902-1967: The beat goes on." On the lasting influence of Langston Hughes in Crisis, an early publisher of his work. In New Crisis, Jan/Feb 2002

Metress, Christopher. "Langston Hughes's 'Mississippi-1955': A Note on Revisions and an Appeal for Reconsideration." African American Review, 2003 Spring

Miller, R. Baxter. "Reinvention and Globalization in Hughes's Stories." MELUS, Spring 2005.

Opoku-Agyemang, Naana, ed.; Lovejoy, Paul E., ed.; Trotman, David V., ed. Africa and Trans-Atlantic Memories: Literary and Aesthetic Manifestations of Diaspora and History (Africa World, 2008).

Patterson, Anita (Boston University). Publisher's site for Race, American Literature and Transnational Modernisms (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2008). New readings of Langston Hughes, Derek Walcott, and Aime Cesaire. [American literature, African American literature, modernism, postcolonial studies, Caribbean literature].

Patterson, Anita. "And bid him translate: Langston Hughes's translations of poetry from French." African American Review, Fall, 2007.

Rampersad, Arnold and David Roessel, eds. A review of The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. Review in American Poetry Review Nov 1995 by Dace, Tish

Scott, Jonathan. "Advanced, repressed, and popular: Langston Hughes during the cold war." College Literature, 22-MAR-06

Simms-Burton, Michele L. Not So Simple: The "Simple" Stories By Langston Hughes. Studies in Short Fiction, Summer, 1997

Smethurst, James. "Lyric Stars: Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes." In Hutchinson, George, ed. The Cambridge Companion to The Harlem Renaissance (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007). At Google Books.

Thurston, Michael "Black Christ, red flag: Langston Hughes on Scottsboro." College Literature, Oct 1995

Tidwell, John Edgar, ed.; Cheryl R. Ragar, ed.; Arnold Rampersad, ed. Montage of a dream: the art and life of Langston Hughes (Univ. of Missouri Press, 2007). Preview at Google Books.

Tracy, Steven C., ed. Publisher's site for A Historical Guide to Langston Hughes. (Oxford Univ. Press, 2004).

Won-gu Kim, Daniel. "We, Too, Rise with You": Recovering Langston Hughes's African Turn 1954-1960 in An African Treasury, the Chicago Defender, and Black Orpheus. African American Review, Fall, 2007.

Dawahare, Anthony. "Langston Hughes' Radical Poetry and the 'End of Race'" Melus (taken offline), Fall, 1998

De Santis, Christopher C., ed. A review of Langston Hughes and the Chicago Defender: Essays on Race, Politics, and Culture, 1942-62. (Univ. of Illinois Press, 1995) Reviewed by C. K. Doreski in Melus (taken offline), Fall, 1998

Gates, H. L. and K.A. Appiah, eds. A review of Langston Hughes: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. (Amistad Press, 1993). Reviewed in Melus (taken offline), Spring, 1997 by Nicholas M. Evans

Introduction, overview, unsigned material

A substantial introduction to Langston Hughes, with samples of his poems, from the Poetry Foundation

Excerpts from reputable critical articles on Langston Hughes with sections on Hughes' Life and poems, including "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" (1926); "The Negro Speaks of Rivers"; "The Weary Blues"; "Harlem"; "The Cat and the Saxophone"; "Negro"; "Justice"; "Mulatto"; "Lynching Song"; "The Bitter River"; "Ku Klux"; "Letter from Spain"; About the Spanish Civil War; A Hughes Spanish Civil War Broadside; Hughes, "Negroes in Spain" (1937); "Goodbye Christ"; "Christ in Alabama"; Claude McKay's "The Negro's Tragedy" and Langston Hughes' "Christ in Alabama"; "Let America Be America Again"; "Flight"; "Madam and the Phone Bill"; About "Come to the Waldorf-Astoria"; "White Shadows"; A Right-Wing Anti-Hughes Flier; "The Backlash Blues; Hughes in the 1930s; "To Negro Writers" (1935); Three Hughes Book-Jackets; Hughes Bibliography; "Three Songs about Lynching"; About Lynching; About the Great Depression, from the Modern American Poetry Site (Univ. of Illinois)

How a poet revises a poem: an original draft by Langston Hughes. Draft of Langston Hughes's "Ballad of Booker T." [Booker T. Washington] A digital image of the Langston Hughes's typescript (click to enlarge), with his autograph revisions, for "Ballad of Booker T." From the Langston Hughes Collection at the Library of Congress.

The NYTimes Langston Hughes site has many Times reviews of his poetry, from 1930-1996, and news articles on Hughes

The Langston Hughes Review, the official publication of the Langston Hughes Society at the University of Georgia.

Two poems by Langston Hughes on Emmett Till. At Devery Anderson's web site, The Emmett Till Murder.

Brief biography of Langston Hughes from PBS

A brief biography of Langston Hughes from the Library of Congress

Excerpt from a Harper Collins casebook (2000) on Mule Bone, the unfinished collaboration between Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston that led to their notorious literary quarrel

A 1959 review of Langston Hughes' poetry by James Baldwin.

An online exhibit of material related to Langston Hughes, from the Beinecke Library at Yale

A web site on Langston Hughes created by C-SPAN to accompany its American Writers series

Some lesson plans for teaching Langston Hughes' poetry, from the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute

Issues and questions for teachers of Langston Hughes' poetry, from Heath guides (moved or removed).

main page | African American writers | 20th-century literature | Harlem Renaissance

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