Until the beginning of the twentieth century, poetry was dominated by white poets and the experiences expressed through Caucasian poets were all that anyone had really heard. Around this time, when the Harlem Renaissance began to take place, many strong black rhythms and voices were breaking out and spreading at an alarming pace throughout the country. One of the voices that rose higher and more strongly than the others was that of Langston Hughes. James Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri to a family of abolitionists. His father, James Nathaniel Hughes, was a storekeeper and his mother was a school teacher who also enjoyed writing poetry. The brother of Langston’s grandfather, John Mercer Langston, was the first Black American to be elected to public office in 1855. His childhood was marked by poverty and the separation of his parents ripped him apart, living with his mother, father and grandmother. He lived in Mexico, Topeka, Kansas, Colorado, Indiana, and Buffalo. At age thirteen he moved back with his mother, who now was remarried. The family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, for his

Soon later, his father paid his tuition to go to Columbia University to study engineering because he did not believe that poetry would ever get his son anywhere. Hughes decided that he wanted to become a lawyer along with his love for poetry, but that was shut down when he was denied the ability to take the bar exam. To the disappointment of his father, Langston abandoned his studies and became much more involved with entertaining things like jazz and blues that were near Harlem. Bored of life at the time, he became a steward on a freighter bond to West Africa to travel. He later went to Paris and Italy. When he returned to the United States he did servant work and wrote poems, later earning him a scholarship to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.

“Hughes's long and distinguished poetic career and his innovations in style and subject matter have inspired two generations of black writers and have immeasurably affected the shape of contemporary black literature.”(Poetry of Langston Hughes) Critics of literature greatly enjoy Langston Hughes and what he brings to the literature world, but others look at him as a fraud, gaining popularity off roots of Black life that he may have not been able to witness.

“The Dream Keeper and other poems is essential for anybody trying to share beauty of Langston Hughes with children.”(TDKAOPBR) This book is a collection meant for children to fully understand his poems.

“Mother to Son” is a poem that I enjoy because it is simple to interpret and I can imagine my mother telling me something like this. The mother is telling her son about the hardships of her past, she uses words like tack, splinters, and boards torn up and no carpet to symbolize the hard times that she went through. She is giving him advice saying no matter how many hills get in your way, continue to climb them, and don’t expect life to be a crystal stair. The poem “Youth”

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