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“The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes (1926)
“The Weary Blues” is one of Langston Hughes’ most famous poems. As with “Children’s Rhymes,” the poem utilizes assonance and reflects Hughes' drive to create poems that sound like jazz or blues. Similar to “Children’s Rhymes,” the poem deals with the difficulties Black people face in the United States. Yet the end of “Children’s Rhymes” ends on a somewhat optimistic note with the narrator disrupting the misleading Pledge of Allegiance, while the end of “The Weary Blues” is rather bleak, as the person in the poem “slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.”
“I, Too” by Langston Hughes (1926)
“I, Too” is another of Langston Hughes’ well-known poems. This poem, too, tackles race in the United States, although it does so with optimism. At first, the Black speaker must eat in the kitchen, but they will “eat well” and “grow strong” and soon eat at the table. The speaker reaffirms their beauty and their Americanness. Put in conversation with “Children’s Rhymes,” “I, Too” suggests that liberty and justice can be for everybody, so the lies detected by the speaker are vanquishable.
“Saturday’s Child” by Countee Cullen (1947)
By Langston Hughes
Cora Unashamed
Langston Hughes
Dreams
Langston Hughes
Harlem
Langston Hughes
I look at the world
Langston Hughes
I, Too
Langston Hughes
Let America Be America Again
Langston Hughes
Me and the Mule
Langston Hughes
Mother to Son
Langston Hughes
Mulatto
Langston Hughes
Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life
Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston
Not Without Laughter
Langston Hughes
Slave on the Block
Langston Hughes
Thank You, M'am
Langston Hughes
The Big Sea
Langston Hughes
Theme for English B
Langston Hughes
The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain
Langston Hughes
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Langston Hughes
The Ways of White Folks
Langston Hughes
The Weary Blues
Langston Hughes
Tired
Langston Hughes