Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes is a boss.

Now that that's out of the way, I'm gonna talk a little bit about an notion of classification that reading Langston has made me think about. In the case of Langston Hughes, I think too often he is thought of as an "American Poet" or an "African-American Poet." And yeah, you got me, those are both true. I'm not disputing that at all. Here's my deal though. You read "A Dream Deferred" to anyone that understands English, and if they don't understand English find yourself a decent translation, and they're gonna get it. They'll understand all the emotion that is running through the words on that page, the words that are coming out of your mouth as you read it to them. In that poem, Hughes is talking about something that isn't just American or African-American. He's talking about disappointment. And unless everyone I've ever met and I having been doing this whole life thing completely wrong, disappointment is a part of life. I'd argue a big part at that.
This sort of goes back to the model of reading we discussed in class with the three boxes: Author, Text, and Reader. Context is important, yes, but don't let the context change, lessen, or narrow what's actually put down in black and white on that pages. Langston Hughes was an American. He was an African American. You can use these facts to understand life out of which his poetry was born. However, don't let the classification of a writer exert too much influence on how you understand a work.