African-American Identity

Authors note:
Below is the poem Aunt Sue's Stories by Langston Hughes. In my short response I analyze how the way he was raised affected the style and topic Hughes chose to write about.

Aunt Sue's Stories

Aunt Sue has a head full of stories.
Aunt Sue has a whole heart full of stories.
Summer nights on the front porch
Aunt Sue cuddles a brown-faced child in her bosom
And tells him stories.

Black slaves
Working in the hot sun,
And black slaves
Walking in the dewy night,
And black slaves
Singing sorrow songs on the banks of a mighty river
Mingle themselves softly
In the flow of Aunt Sue’s voice,
Mingle themselves softly
In the dark shadows that cross and recross
Aunt Sue’s stories.

And the dark-faced child, listening,
Knows that Aunt Sue’s stories are real stories.
He knows that Aunt Sue never got her stories
Out of any book at all,
But they came
Right out of her own life.

The dark-faced child is quiet
Of a summer night
Listening to Aunt Sue’s stories. 

All throughout his life Langston Hughes had a passion to write about the beauty of African -American identity. When his dad left him while he was trying to find work and his mom worked various low paying jobs all around, he was raised by his maternal grandmother in Lawrence Kansas. Hughes remembers as a child sitting in his grandmothers lap as she told him long beautiful stories about the people who set the Negros free. Hughes grandmother never told stories out of a book witch makes me wonder if I the line, Beat out of blood with words sad sung,  from the poem "Afro-American Fragment" is a reflection of what his grandmother stories talked about or what kind of feeling they portrayed.

There are two main reasons that I believe Hughes was so interested in writing about the beauty of African-American people. One way is The way his grandmother told beautiful stories of the brave people who set the Negros free was the driving reason Hughes wanted to write about this. In her stories everyone always moved ahead heroically towards an end. Nobody ever cried in his grandmothers stories, they just worked, schemed or fought, but no crying. The second reason is after high school Hughes went and work with his father for a long painful year in Mexico where they clashed about a major issue, his father hated Negros. Since Hughes didn't know his father very well and he was raised with a clear image of all Negro being strong and brave people; and the fact that Hughes father hated Negros inspired Hughes more. When his father said this to him it inspired him even more to go on to write great poem, and plays about strong beautiful African american men and women.