Walking through Harlem with

Langston Hughes

 
 
Student: Yasnaya Guibert Masso
Course: Literary Modernisms
Instructor: Irina Rasmussen
Stockholm University - Spring 2019
ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS

Format​:
Length: 2500-3000 words, including footnotes but excluding bibliography.
Font: Times New Roman 12. Spacing: 2. Please do add your name and page numbers!
The essay must be uploaded on Mondo (Assignments) so that you can certify that the text is
your own. All essays will be run through the university’s text-matching tool urkund to detect
potential cutting and pasting from the internet. NO E-MAIL SUBMISSION!!

For this assignment, write an essay to develop a conceptual framing of the modernist text of
your choice. Aim to develop your analysis vis-à-vis or through some of the theorists of
modernism we’ve read (Jameson, Lewis, Wicke, Matz, or Walkowitz) to explore the validity
and strengths of their concepts in relation to your reading. The concepts for analysis can be:
● modern ideological simulacra (Lewis)
● modernist cross-referencing (Jameson)
● modernist innovations flowing “from mass cultural paradigm to the novelistic
techniques, and not in reverse order” (Wicke 125)
● modernism’s re-perceptualization of the world through the expanding human
sensorium (Matz via Jameson 305)
● modernism’s dynamic alternation between modes of “immediate sense and
removed abstraction” (Matz 302)
● modernism’s treatment of space as “‘composed of intersections of mobile
elements’, making space ‘​a practiced place’​” (White via Michel de Certeau 6)

One possible essay topic can be the following​: In her chapter on critical cosmopolitanism and
modernist narrative, Walkowitz associates critical cosmopolitanism with “a new distrust of
civilizing processes, and of the role of art in these processes,” arguing that critical
cosmopolitan styles capture “both a desire for and an ambivalence about collective social
projects” (4). In this assignment, you can choose one of the texts to discuss the potentially
critical gestures or attitudes implicit in its style.
Deadline: March 27

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NOTE. This essay can be read in two ways: from the top until the end or first the red texts and images to get a historical immersion
and them the rest of the content. The experimentation with this essay structure is an homage to the modernist spirit.

Walking through Harlem with Langston Hughes

“The modern artist is working with space and time and

expressing his feelings rather than illustrating.”

Jackson Pollock, ​Interview with William Wright​. (1950).

Harlem in 1920. ​Many African Americans in the United States took refuge in New York,
fleeing from the cruelty and segregation of the South. This time was called the Great
Migration and move “1.5 millions of people from the South to Northern and Western States”
(White 2013, p. 157). The Harlem neighborhood was a major congregation area for African
Americans. This site was a creative vortex in many aspects and it was almost a paradise for
black communities. However, the change of place for those who migrated from the South with
little education did not offer much hope. African Americans in New York did not have full
access to the same services and opportunities as white people. It was urgent to organize the
communities and fight for their rights.

Fig. 1. ​Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) was founded by Marcus Harvey in 1914 and was
headquartered in Harlem from 1918 to 1927. The image is one of the many UNIA parades in Harlem, 1920.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.

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 It is in the turbulent Harlem, in New York City, that important figures of letters,

music and arts were known through the movement Harlem Renaissance, an African

American dynamization around the 1920s and 1930s that at that time was known as the New

Negro Movement. Some of the important figures of this period were the Jamaican poet

Claude McKay (1889 – 1948), the writer Alain Leroy Locke (1885 – 1954), the painter

Aaron Douglas (1899 – 1979), the political leader Marcus Garvey (1887 – 1940), the writer

from the rural South Zora Neale Hurston (1891 – 1960), the musician and composer Duke

Ellington (1899 – 1974), the civil rights activist and writer W. E. B. Du Bois (1868 – 1963),

the sculptors Augusta Savage (1892-1962) and Selma Burke (1900-1995), and the poet

Langston Hughes (1902 – 1967), and it will be his poems, ideas, and vision of Harlem that

will help us to shape a notion of modernist ​place and ​space c​ onceptions; as well as its

interceptions with the notion of Michel de Certeau of a ​“practiced place”.

Langston Hughes is a well-known figure in the Harlem Renaissance movement, and

has also been considered one of the leaders of this movement. He is also reckoned between

the prominent poets in the USA literary history. His poems usually depicted the lives of low

and middle-class African Americans. He criticized the incongruences of the American dream

and its social inequalities. Hughes defended the need of creating an authentic Afro American

art, rooted in all the Negro characteristics that were undervalued by the society. In general, he

is regarded as “a powerful man who used his poetry skills to express his feelings towards the

African American race, which was being highly discriminated against. Langston Hughes did

not only impact the African American Community of his time but became an inspiration for

all generations” (Manangama-Duki 2017, p. 162).

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 One interesting aspect of Hughes’ poetry are the notions of Harlem as a ​place and

space.​ Michel de Certeau established a clear differentiation between these two terms in his

1984 book ​The Practice of Everyday Life.​ According to De Certeau, “‘place’ ‘implies an

indication of stability’ and, as such, acts as a ‘law’, whereas ‘space’ is composed of

intersections of mobile elements’, making space ‘a practiced place’” (​White 2013, p. 6).

We could say that Hughes refers to Harlem as a ​place b​ ecause it has a defined

architecture. It has the buildings in an specific ​lieu ​that can’t not be shared. Harlem has a

tangible position in a broader geographical context that is the USA. Nevertheless, Harlem is

also a ​space because in it the people interact, the people struggle to survive, the people are in

different acts and complex social dynamics that occur simultaneously, and that also have

historical roots. So here in Harlem as space, we notice directions, velocities and timing of the

people as mobile elements, as social constructs that are ensembled and filling the place.

Hughes did not know about these two notions (place and space) but his intuition led him in

these directions, and we can interpret that way now.

Going even deeper in the level of interpretation, we could consider his poetry as a

place. The words of his poems, writing or tell, recreates in the reader/listener strong

experiences of travel or physical permutation. He conducts us into a reality that is far on time

and that sometimes we can not understand because of our privileges. No matter how long

someone dedicates time to explain how is it to be a black man or woman in a white country,

if you don’t have the same frame of experiences, you could empathize but never feel the

same. Hughes landscapes are so evocative that we get to feel attracted and curious for the

Harlem that lives in his verses.

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 We notice that in Hughes’ poems, Harlem could be depicted as a place with “material,

physical and geomorphic emphasis” (​White 2013, p. 6). Also we can notice how Hughes

translates abstract concepts like frustration, loneliness, hopelessness, and anger into physical

and tangible indicators of Harlem characteristics. For example, the poem “Young Prostitute”

is a portrait of a young girl that is just one among many other young girls in Harlem. Girls

without money, education or alternatives for making a decent living:

“Her dark brown face

Is like a withered flower

On a broken stem.

Those kind come cheap in Harlem” (Hughes 1923)

In this poem, the girls' location in Harlem is not an accident. It is the expression of a

common figure of the street, that is metamorphosed in “a broken stem”. A girl with the

vulnerability of the flowers and precociously mature when he compares her to a dead or

“withered flower”. She is part of Harlem’s landscape and there is a congruence in the way

she is seen and the environment that surrounds her. She is a symbol of dead Nature and

Harlem is her cemetery. What makes us feel uncomfortable with the scene is that “the

narrator does not hold himself responsible for the condition of the prostitute so that the

narrator’s position allows the reader to avoid considering his or her responsibility and the

responsibility of society as a whole” (Room 2015, p. 6).

Another poem that connects abstract concepts with Harlem streets is “A Christian

Country”. It seems that the most important figure for religious people appears on the floor of

an alley with a bottle of liquor in his hand:

“God slumbers in a back alley

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 With a gin bottle in His hand.

Come on, God, get up and fight” (Hughes 1923).

We can think that this poem is a conflict with God. It is a wake-up call to God as if

we could avenge the indifference of God by giving him a beating, and asking him to “get up

and fight”. However, it is possible to interpret it as a denunciation of despair in front of

addictions. In Harlem there were problems of alcoholism:

“As the great migration of Southern rural blacks to the Northern cities

got under way in the early twentieth century, drinking changed its

position in black culture to become a symbol of liberation and

sophistication, closely associated with the rise of ragtime and jazz, of

New York nightclubs and the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s” (Room

1982, p. N/A).

It is that God, who can also be a black man defeated by addiction, the repository of

hope. Hughes invites him to “get up and fight” for his rights. The fact that God/the black man

is not drunk in a fancy place like the Cotton Club or the Savoy but in a “back alley”

intensifies the hopelessness of the situation. The reader can imagine any dark and narrow

street that a reasonable walker tries to avoid in Harlem, because behind “the spiritual and

cultural renewal” (White 2013, p.155 ) of the “New Negro Movement” the district was

struggling with the cruelty of a society that “makes impossible for a man to be both a Negro

and an American” (DuBois 1903, p. 26).

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 “The street geometrically defined by urban planning is transformed into a space by

walkers” (De Certeau 1984, p. 117) and Hughes makes the reader walk with him. It seems

that the poet walks by Harlem streets and mentions what he is drawn to. He also depicts to us

the instinctive reactions of the people on the streets in front of objects, signs, bars, shops...

For example, the poem “Railroad Avenue” mentions the Harlem Railroad ​—​one of the first

railroads in the United States​—​. This element of transportation in the city embodies

modernity and the juxtaposition with other elements like the “box-car some train / has

forgotten”, “a Victrola”, the people asking for the lottery winning number “Was the number”

generates a dynamic photography of the ​place​. But at the same time, and this is the most

interesting aspect of this poem, Hughes interrelate and confront the material objects with the

people emotions, in this case, the joy expressed through the laugh, and now we are walking

through ​space​:

A passing girl
With purple powdered skin.
Laughter
Suddenly
Like a taut drum.
Laughter
Suddenly
Neither truth nor lie.
Laughter
Hardening the dusk dark evening.
Laughter
Shaking the lights in the fish joints,
Rolling white balls in the pool rooms,
And leaving untouched the box-car
Some train has forgotten. (Hughes 1926).

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 The girl’s joy seems powerful and can touch everything: the “rolling white balls”,

“the street lights”, all except the box-car. Maybe because the train, in particular, is associated

with the history of migration, search of hope and mobility of the Afro American people. The

pain related to this particular device [the train], can not be seen with humor yet. The girl’s

face “with purple powdered skin” contaminates the joy with some inauthenticity. What is she

hiding behind the makeup? “Neither truth nor lie”, introduces also ambiguity related to the

Nature of this happiness. What is the element that detonates this joy? Could we really trust in

the girl capacity to express her emotions?

Harlem’s Night Language​. “Ho De Hi De Ho!”. “Tap, tap, tap”. “Clap, clap,
clap”.“What’s de numbah?”“Ah’m the reefer man, selling marahuana cigarettes at 2 for
$.25”.“You’ve never heard a piano really played until you hear Garland Wilson”.“Nothing
happens before 2 am. Ask for Clarence”.“The only important omission is the location of the
various speakeasies but since there are 500 of them, you won’t have much trouble”. “There
are clubs opening and closing at all times – There’s too many to put them all on this map”.

Fig. 2. ​Map of Harlem nightclubs drawn by E. Simms Campbell, the first African American
illustrator to be syndicated and whose work was featured regularly in national magazines like
The New Yorker, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, and Playboy. Source: The Economist 2016.

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 Some of Hughes’ poems show Harlem as a relational and dynamic space, with

anarchy movements and our subjective reading actives the stories, as they are depicted in the

Night Club Map of Harlem ​drawn by E. Simms Campbell in 1932 (​The Economist website

2016)​. The clubs, the jazz, the blues, the nightlife merge with the people in Hughes’ poetry:

“The Harlem of the ‘Weary Blues’ become therefore for him “Jazzonia”, a

new world of escape and release, an exciting never-never land in which

“sleek black boys” blew their hearts out of on silver trumpets in a “Whirling

cabaret”. It was a place where the bold eyes of the white girls called to black

men, and “dark brown girls” here found “in blond men arms” (Davids 1996,

p. 25).

The “Weary Blues” include many of the stylistic features of the poet. The use of

popular and colloquial language “Ain’t got nobody but ma self. / I’s gwine to quit ma

frownin”. The generosity in the rhetorical devices. Repetition: “He did a lazy sway. . . . / He

did a lazy sway. . . .” Metaphors: “Droning a drowsy syncopated tune”. The use of the music,

the blues and jazz as a resource to introduce black rhythm in the poems: “Thump, thump,

thump, went his foot on the floor.”

An also we notice that for Hughes Harlem is an space of “experiential and

socio-cultural” notions (​White 2013, p. 6). He observes the space, the personalities (the

musician, the prostitute, the elevator-boy, the laundry worker, the policeman, the writer, the

dancers, the singers...) and document their experiences regarding the socio-cultural

differences. He explains the dynamic of the interactions between all these characters and the

environment. Hughes’s poems bring into focus “how urban architecture delimits the

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opportunities of African American workers” (White 2013, p. 167). The poem “Elevator Boy”,

as is referred by White, shows how the narrator controls the elevator “Goin’ up an’ down, /

Up an’ down”, but can’t control his own life fluctuations of luck and sources of incomes. He

does small jobs here and there:

“Or somebody else's shoes

To shine,

Or greasy pots in a dirty kitchen”. (Hughes 1926)

It is clear that the position pays poorly and is low in prestige and that the worker

believes his life can make changes (up-down), and his location as elevator boy reinforces

daily this possibility (White 2013, p. 167).

Harlem in 1925. The ‘foreign-born Negro population of Harlem’ was numbered ‘about
35,000’ in 1925. Police forces use violent intimidation as a way to control and persuade
people to move to New York. White extremist civil groups also use violence with the same
purpose and at that time was frequent the lynching of no white men.

Fig. 3. ​NAACP offices at 69 Fifth Avenue announcing with a flag the lynching of an African
American man in 1925. Source: Library of Congress.

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 Hughes use the poetry to make the chronic of Harlem and the American society. His

perception of the city evolves as equal as his voice as a poet. At the beginning of his career

his poems show the fascination for Harlem’s nightlife, and it as an escape motive; but his

mature voice becomes more centered on the marginality and social drama of the

neighborhood. In his mature stages some of the variety of theme developed in his poems are

“the miscegenation, parental rejection, race, racism, the history of the deportation, the pride

of blacks, the anger, the protest, the dignity of Blacks, social injustice, suffering, the fight for

equality, the oral tradition of Africa, (and) death.” (​Manangama-Duki 2017, p. 166​).

Harlem in 1935​. Fifty percent of African Americans were unemployed. Theft, illegal
business, gambling and prostitution were common practices. The problems with employment
triggered a deep crisis that exploded with violence in March 1935 in one of the largest riots
in the history of Harlem.

Fig. 4. ​Policeman threatening people in Harlem during the riot on March 19, 1935. This riot
generated $200 million dollars in property damages. Source: NY Daily News.

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 Finally, I want to reinforce that the notions of place and space in Hughes poetry are
manifested through the eyes of love. Even in the darkest and desperate lines, the reader can
feel his love for Harlem. We could say that he was a localist modernist by its “aesthetic
encounters with regionally specific socio-cultural markers, such as landscape, language and
visual culture” (White 2013, p. 25). But he had also the eyes in the world, and grounded on
the black fight for equal opportunities. Harlem was his Universe, and also ours everytime we
read his poems. I would like to conclude with the vibration of Hughes words in “Harlem”
bringing back memories no so far away in time:
So we stand here
On the edge of hell
In Harlem
And look out on the world
And wonder
What we’re gonna do
In the face of
What we remember.

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REFERENCES

Davids, A. P. (1996). Harlem of Langston Hughes. In Analysis and Assessment, 1940-1979,

Cary D. Wintz [Ed.] Texas: Garland Publishing.

De Certeau, M. (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life. [​ Digital resurs] R ​ etrieved from
https://chisineu.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/certeau-michel-de-the-practice-of-everyday-life.
pdf

Du Bois, W. E. B (1903). ​W. E. B. Du Bois and The Souls of Black Folk. ​USA: Amazon
Createspace Independent Pub.

Manangama-Duki, J. (2017). The Essential Characteristics of Langston Hughes’ Poetry and

Their Impact on the Congolese Conscience. In ​International Journal of Language and
Literature ​5(2), pp. 162-173. DOI: 10.15640/ijll.v5n2a17

Nichols, A. (2015). The Evolving Woman in Langston Hughes’s Poetry of the 1920s
Retrieved from ​https://independent.academia.edu/AlleneNichols

Room, R. (1982). A Reverence for Strong Drink: The Lost Generation and the Elevation of
Alcohol in American Culture. Retrieved from ​https://www.robinroom.net/reverenc.htm

White, E. B. (2013). Transatlantic avant-gardes [Digital resurs] little magazines and localist
modernism. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

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