langstonhughesseminar:Early LifeLangston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri. He happened to be the
langstonhughesseminar:Early LifeLangston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri. He happened to be the second child of school teacher Carrie Langston and James Hughes. His father left Langston’s family and later divorced Carrie. He left and went to Cuba, Then to Mexico, in order to escape the constant and enduring racist acts in the United States.Whilst post separation of his parents left his mother economically crippled, she went off in order to seek employment. During this period Langston was taken under the wing of his maternal grandmother, Mary Patterson Langston. She resided in Lawrence, Kansas where Langston spent much of his childhood. His Grandmother shared her activist experiences of her generation, and instilled in her grandson a lasting sense of racial pride and a new found sense of equality. After Langston’s grandmother passed away, he live with family friends James and Mary Reed. Because Langston’s early life was so very unstable, his childhood would come to be a part of that which highly influenced who he was and how he created his poems late in life.Hughes, again, went and live with his mother for a second time in Lincoln, Illinois. She had married for a second time while he was still an adolescent. Ultimately they ended up in Cleveland, Ohio, where he attended high school. Whilst in high school in Cleveland, Langston worked for the school newspaper, edited the yearbook, and had began to explore the world of his first short stories, poetry, and dramatic plays. During this time, he had discovered his deep and fond love of books.AdulthoodIn the early 1920s Hughes spent time in England. In November 1924, Hughes ventured back to the US to live with his mother in Washington, DC. Hughes began working as a busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel. As Hughe’s had little to no time for writing he quit the position to work as a busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel. Hughes had met the poet Vachey Lindsay, and he shared some poems. Lindsay publicized his discovery Hughes after being vastly impressed with his work. By this time, Hughes’s earlier work had been published in magazines and was about to be collected into his first book of poetry.DeathHughes died on May 22, 1967. He died from complications after abdominal surgery, related to prostate cancer. He was 65. -- source link