African American Dream and Diaspora in Works of

Langstone Hughes

A Review Article Submitted to the Council of the College of

Languages – English Department at Salahaddin University - Erbil

by
Marwan M. Abdi

Course; Diaspora Poetry

Instructor; Dr. Sherzad Barzani

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Introduction

Many critics have acknowledged that the works of Harlem Renaissance are very
significant in terms of the historical role that they played in awareness raising of the
black Nations. Writers of the Harlem Renaissance tried to challenge the long esteemed
conventions that regarded the white as wise and superior while the blacks as inferior and
unintellectual. One of the seminal figures of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes
basically tried to write poems that focused on African American history, traditions and
their cultural heritage. In his works he tried to link the blacks who were living in the
modern age in the American context with their ancestral history and their rich cultural
and literary tradition. He tried to represent the national pride of the black people which
highly contrasted with the very inferior image of the negro that had been dominant
throughout the Pre-Harlem history. The following study is going to analyze and evaluate
three articles that are written about this great American poet. Concepts such as the
American Dream and the Harlem writers’ role in blacks’ awareness concerning history
and international matters are going to be tackled in the selected articles.

Rationale

Although a great deal of study and research have been conducted in the field of African
American literature, but with the ongoing biases and racial prejudice that are happening
in many European or American countries, I believe focusing on writers of the Harlem
Renaissance could be very useful in terms of getting the young generations introduced to
the rich tradition of the Black writers that is basically modelled after their myths and their
oral tradition. With the ongoing concerns, such as the Black Lives Matter , I believe the
focus of the scholars have to be diverted towards the literature of the oppressed, the
marginalized and the victimized. The African American writers who try to give voice to
the dilemmas of an uprooted nation who is neither connected to their ancestral past nor to
the modern metropolitan state. Hence in works of writers such as Longstone Hughes, I
believe we can unveil the sufferings of a nation that have been victimized throughout
history.

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Research Approach

The research methodologies that basically are employed in the diaspora studies, range
from postcolonial studies to Marxist and psychoanalysis. Therefore for evaluating the
researches that are done in the field of Harlem Renaissance, a multidisciplinary approach
is going to be adopted in order to analyze the articles’ argument and their thematic
framework.

Review of the Articles

The American Dream of Langston Hughes by James Presley

This article is about the concept of the American dream in Langston Hughes poetry. The
writer starts the introduction with providing a biographical data from the Hughes who
recalls being beaten and ill-treated during his childhood by the White people. This event
had a very traumatizing impact on his psychology and inspired him to reflect upon the
concept of American Dream and democracy in his country. As a poet laureate Hughes
started to share his concerns for the plights of the black people in America. The writer of
the article adds more biographical information and discusses Hughes’s enrollment in a
school which broadened his perspective about the bitter reality that was his nation’s
shallow and simplistic conception of the ideals of the American Dream. Although many
of the white people were prejudiced, but the article acknowledges the fact that there were
some who believed in equality, justice and humanity. Getting matured as a poet, Hughes
went through a development and transformation in which he started to shift his
viewpoints time by time. As a national writer, he became involved in international
politics and things that were happening in South America and European countries. A very
significant aspect of his writing as the article argues was the negro characters who
populate all of his poems. Through integrating these dark colored peoSple into his poems,
he used his art as a form of protest. He tried to use his poetry to undermine the inequality
and the injustice that was predominant in America.

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The article goes on to elaborate on this kind of political protest through some works such
as "Let America be America again", which called for the fulfillment of the American
dream that had never happened. Hughes’s concerns for the flight of the black people
however, did not hinder his attempts to become a international thinker instead, dealing
with the plights of the Indians and the immigrants and the poor white people as well,
became his main concerns. Highlighting this aspect of his poetry is a very strong aspect
of the article which introduces Hughes as not a reginal writer tackling only with the
sorrows of the black people in America. Rather he is represented as a writer who had
international concerns regarding humans being abused in different spots of the world.
Therefore, notions such as democracy, freedom and brotherhood in his poems are
associated with all races around the world. Although his works mainly protested against
the injustice, they were imbued with a mixture of hope, optimism and pessimism.

“Jim Crows Last Stand,” as a poem aimed at America’s legal system , is quoted in the
article. This critique is very evident where a dream is being strangled, and ambitions are
bruised and battered. I believe this is a good reflection on the concept of the shattered
ideals and disillusionment that is very evident in the poem. Here the poet’s dark hands try
to sustain a shadow; a dream which symbolizes the writer's, the elites, who try to remind
people of their Dreams for justice and equality. Article goes on to bring other poems
which deal with the same similar theme. For instance "Montage of a Dream Deferred"
talks about a wall that is surrounding Harlem while the nation's unreachable American
Dream stands beyond that border. Here their faded dream cuts through their bodies and
pierces their hearts, which is a very effective way of representation.

In a poem titled "Ask Your Mama" a mixture of nightmares and dreams are represented
to highlight a promising future for blacks who were gaining power in politics. This is a
reference to the Dream of the Negros being fulfilled in political figures like Martin
Luther King. This work basically portrays the bitterness of the black artists who were
stereotyped by the White people and reflects upon the ambitions of the negroes for
having a better material life.

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This article wraps up its discussions noting that; although the concept of the American
Dream have been represented sometimes as a sort of nightmare but always is imbued
with a sense of hope in works of Hughes. Referring to one of his interviews the writer
recalls the poet’s faith in democracy for all Americans and concludes that American
Dream has to be accepted as an existing reality, and black nations have to be inspired to
fulfil their dreams. The article finally come to closure with a very short poem from
Hughes that I believe is a very perfect ending to such discussions. In the poem the
speaker addresses America and says "Listen, America" and asserts himself as an
individual who has the right for freedom, similar to the white people. Although this
article studied a seemingly archaic topic, but it examines it in a way that the dreams of a
nation are represented as never ending although not fulfilled in some certain period of
history but writers such as Langston Hughes tried to incite their nations not to surrender
and to fight for the rights and their dreams.

Fragmentation and Diaspora in the Work of Langston Hughes by Jeff Westover

This article by Westover tackles some more complicated issues related to the African
American nations which could be studied from a postcolonial and psychoanalytical
perspective. Similar to the former paper, it introduces the concept of the American Dream
from the very beginning, but draws attention to the disillusionment and the bitter reality
that appeared in the form of racial injustice. This injustice inspired writers like Langston
Hughes to assert themselves through their poetic language and to reshape the American
Dream in the form of rebirth of the black American nation. Later on, the writer draws
attention to the fragmented identity of the black people , who suffer from a double
identity. Citing the very famous African American historian and intellectual Du Bois the
writer introduces the concept of the double consciousness which is exemplified through
Hughes who could neither belong to the white American community, nor to the
community of the Blacks.

Jeff Westover considers poems such as "I" and "we" examples that refer to diaspora
community of the black people, something that is not accepted by the American
community. In other words, in a diasporic sense the black people lived simultaneously

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outside and inside America but writers regarded this position as a privilege, and tried to
take advantage from their broadened perspective which belonged both to the outsider and
the insider. So, this standpoint provided them with the chance to view life from American
and African American prospective.

The article then draws attention to the way black writers tried to find their place within
one of the contexts i.e., to reflect upon their ancestral origin or their position within the
American continent. In order to elaborate on this paper examines some poems which
have been colored with a sense of loss and dislocation. The gap, that is caused by a
fractured identity, by the article is called the African Fragmented Identity. This breach
and gap is represented through some poems that are punctuated by Dickinsonian dashes
to symbolize the gap which the writer feels and his very deep unconscious. Being far
away from Africa and his ‘dark face’ symbolically stands for writer’s longing for his
ancestral past and his cultural heritage that has been taken away from him. Through the
analytical view the article draws attention to the theme of slavery that is the very
backdrop of the majority of Hughes's poems, since African Americans where violently
taken away from their mother land and were cut off from their history.

Cultural leaders such as Hughes did their best, to get this desperate nation introduced to
their past. Through their poems they tried to portray the warmth of the ancestral
tradition and to create a hopeful message out of the diminished history. The article goes
on to elaborate on this sense of loss and displacement through Du Bois and Bhabha, who
basically were concerned with the double consciousness of the oppressed Nations. In this
part, the article compares these two thinkers views , i.e., the double consciousness and
types of self-representation which Bhabha categorizes as monolithic (traditional) and the
disruptive which stands for the subversive attitude of the masses who challenge authority.
In other words, the double consciousness is always the result of the conflict between the
performative (disruptive) and the monolithic ideologies, i.e., metropolis dominates some
ideology but the suppressed tries to subvert that dominant ideology and this according to
the article causes a fragmentation that is at the very core of the personality of the African
Americans.

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Hughes’s dreamed about unifying the black nations around the world, that's why in many
of his poems he tried to project a unified community of black Nations. Although, this is a
recurring theme in many of his works, but the article argues that at the very background
of such problems exists a sense of anxiety that is due to writer’s sense of dislocation and
separation from his origins. In order to clarify this the writer brings examples from the
word “my people” that is repeated a lot and this according to the article denotes the
speakers hesitation and anxiety since he knows that he can never be reunited with this
past and his African heritage. This issue I believe could be a studied also from a
psychoanalytical perspective, since those individuals who suffer from a sense of
dislocation always are tortured by a sort of trauma. In other words, they are removed
physically from their past but their collective consciousness and their memories always
get them back to the past and their ancestral history. This causes fragmented identity
which in psychology is called Hysteria. I believe here a mixture of psychology and the
theories of Northrop Frye and Carl Jung's collective consciousness could be a very
valuable source for examining this topic in works of the Harlem Renaissance writers
(Bressler, 2011, p.).

In many occasions in the article the writer acknowledges that Hughes was profoundly
disturbed by the divisions in his identity that was the result of the imperial policies of the
Western countries. In his poem the Drum Hughes echoes the collective consciousness of
a nation who is suffering from fragmentation wrought the White colonizers. In this poem
as the writer contents the word ‘remember’ functions as a very strong antidote to the
wounds of a nation who suffers from the Lost history that nibbles at their psyche. It
celebrates the black culture which is considered to be the only way for overcoming
anxiety and fragmentation that is the result of their dislocation. This situation is very
clearly highlighted when Hughes describes his situation as being caught in a crack while
his world is being split into different parts. This symbolically stands for his diasporic and
hybrid identity and being caught in the middle of the nowhere. Finally the paper draws
attention to Dickinsonian dashes that are used in many of the poems of Hughes. Similarly
the dashes divide his poems to highlight the gap that could not bridged by the poet.

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In another section, Westover acknowledges that the African Americans slaves who were
subjugated by the colonizers were actually cut off from their cultural heritage, and this
caused them suffer not only in terms of psychology but also from the commercial
perspective. In order to finalize his discussions he quotes from " The Negro Speaks of
the River" do highlights the African diaspora as a historical reality that has to be taken
into account. This very nostalgic poem as Westover argues expresses the poet’s ties with
the motherland with his ancestral memory, and the poet tries to inspire his fragmented
nation to transcend the boundaries that are set by the imperialists in order to become a
global community.

This article's detailed analysis of the poems of Hughes, was very well-structured in terms
of using different poems for justifying his arguments. But I believe the concept of
diaspora, could be better developed through application of psychological theories Freud,
who basically focuses on the interpretation of the dreams and because within this article
there were a lot of references to the dreams and memories, I believe using the theories of
Freud and Jack Lacan's ideas regarding ‘symbolic order’ and the way language shapes
human's identity could be very useful. Hence, future research could be conducted to
work on the structure and the linguistic elements within the poem which could be related
to an individual's traumatized psyche.

"Near the Congo": Langston Hughes and the Geopolitics of Internationalist Poetry
by Ira Dworkin

This article by Ira Dworkin, basically is concerned with Hughes as an international writer
and intellectual. From the very beginning it sets up its goal that is, a thorough analysis of
Langston Hughes’s seminal work; "The Negro Speaks of the River". Similar to the other
papers from the very beginning it draws attention to Du Bois, the leading intellectual of
the Harlem Renaissance who inspired many of the black artists to play their role in
awareness raising of the black nations. This article basically tries to highlight the political
concerns that are represented through various symbols within this poem. Referring to the
national Association For Advancing the Colored People, which was basically led by Du

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Bois, the article discusses the aim of the organization, that was basically increasing the
political sensibility of the black people.

From the very outset of the analytical study of Hughes’s poem Dworkin draws attention
to Congo which was considered to be as a symbol of European brutality and exploitation.
After a brief introduction the writer frames his discussions around some thematic
dimensions of the poem. For instance, the first section focuses on the concept of the
"rivers and our past", which deals with a symbolic representation of the heritage of the
slaves who have been graphically and psychologically detached from their Origins. This
section of the analysis chiefly focuses on the diaspora sense that was thoroughly
discussed in the former article.

The second part deals with the historical significance of the rivers which are considered
to be the cradles of the civilization in Africa and Asia. In this part the article goes on to
provide some historical background about the political uprisings of the Kurdish people
against British imperialism. With this background we can note that political concerns are
resonated through this poem, since the article provides a good data to prove the fact that
Hughes was aware of the political atmosphere in Egypt and the Middle East. Here
Dworkin concludes that the rivers that are mentioned in the poem allude to a historical
struggle of nations in Egypt and Iraq against the British imperialists.

The third section that is called " upon the Nile" draws attention to the similarities between
the Nile and Euphrates, which symbolize these Nations’ history and recalls the history of
the struggle of these Nations against Colonial authorities. After all these references the
writer goes on to provide some documents about the Egyptians struggle for independence
against the colonizers.

The fourth section which is entitled as " near the Congo" develops the same idea that was
mentioned in the former section and draws attention to the history of exploitation and
extermination of the slaves by the Belgian King, Leopold. Providing some data about the
brutalities of this king in Congo, the article highlights the brutal act of cuttng off the
hands of the slaves, which existed in the past but is done in a different way in the modern
world, i.e., the racial injustice has persisted to exist throughout many countries around
the world. The writer in this section also associates Du Bois's "Darkwater" with this

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poem and maintains that Hughes was always inspired by the works of this thinker, for
this reason Egypt is used as a symbol for not only its historical heritage but also as a
symbol for liberation of black people.

The fifth section gets the reader back to Mississippi and tries to connect it to the
historical event in which Abraham Lincoln made a trip through the Mississippi River and
witnessed the horrors of slavery. This confluence between the Congo River which
symbolizes the end of brutality with the Mississippi River is a technique as the article
argues, employed by the poet to make the reader think of the brutality of slavery in
American history. After this the writer goes on to deal with the postcolonial struggle of
the people in Congo which was highly valued by the intellectual black activists
throughout the world. Hughes tried to take advantage from this revolution, as a sort of
inspiring force for the black generations, that's why he wrote a lot of poems that
symbolically dealt with Congo as a representative of the black Nations. This was a kind
of transition within his artistic development, since he became more concerned with
political solidarity with suppressed nations around the world. This artistic development
and his reconsiderations is very clearly articulated in this article when it compares too
short poems which were written about the Congo Revolution. While the first one has a
more passive speaker talking about those events, the second version that is reconsidered,
ends with; "We, too, Congo ..., Rise with you." this shift in the tone as the article argues
was Hughes's reaction to the assassination of the prominent revolutionary figure of the
Congo Lumumba. Langston Hughes continued to write inspirational poems about
revolutions and he became an inspiration for the young generation who started to see
Congo as a symbol for the modern African American nationalism. The article finally
concludes that reading poems of Hughes is in need of a comprehensive study of poet’s ,
political, cultural and literary concerns which went beyond local dimensions. This study
which was well conducted in terms of reading historical data for the analysis, I believe
makes the reader think of future readings and studies, because reading the poems in their
context I believe would be more useful and informative since the historical and
biographical data related to the poem are very essential in understanding the poem’s
message. This paper’s approaches I found so informative, since it was dealing basically
with only one short poem but infused with many stories and histories.

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Conclusion

The articles discussed in this review article basically focus on issues such as the black
Nations’ victimization, and their position within the new World Order. Although the
articles deal with different aspects of the African American community but they are
related in terms of dealing with a nation who has been cut off from its origin. This sense
of dislocation of a nation who have been colonized not only physically and
geographically but also psychologically, is represented from different vantage points. The
first article by Presley, focuses on a nation who cannot find any position within the new
continent. They have been cut off from their ancestral homeland, but in the new
continents they are not able to find their place within the dreamland. In other words, they
suffer psychologically since their dreams are not fulfilled.

The second article was primarily concerned with the dilemma of being uprooted by the
colonial power and this colonization, has resulted in a fragmented identity that is
characterized by victim’s longing for home. In other words, the colonized nations always
suffer from fragmentation that is caused by the metropolitan culture, since they have lost
contact with their own traditions and cultures and they are merged into another culture
that is found in the metropolis. They always suffer from a lack and loss and have a desire
for compensating for that loss through making association with the history and cultural
heritage. And because their past exists only in the form of memory and abstractions, they
always suffer from a Hybrid identity that prevents them from belonging to a specific
culture, neither the Center nor the Periphery.

The third article dealing with the same issue of the history of the African American, but
this time a seminal work by the Langston Hughes is studied through a variety of
historical and cultural references. The very rich historical data that was provided by the
writer was a significant aspect of this article.At first sight the readers might assume that
this poem "the negro speaks of the river" could be on explained only in few pages but the
comprehensive and well-structured study that was conducted in this article was based on
very significant historical data and proves that the work cannot be studied as a mere

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representation of slavery. The poem instead proves to be possessing international
dimensions and concerns for the black people that goes beyond geographical boundaries.
This International attitude that was raised by the article I believe is a very significant
outcome when compared with the other articles.

For future studies, I believe the international concerns of the poets such as Langston
Hughes must be highlighted, since many of the poets of the Harlem Renaissance used to
think in universal terms not in a reginal prospective. I believe the second and the third
articles’ approaches could be blended, in order to do a comprehensive research on
concepts related to diaspora and political and international concerns as represented in the
third article. Therefore, I believe a mixture of approaches, for example, post-colonial,
Marxist approach, psychoanalysis, and new Aesthetic school could be employed for the
future studies in this field. Because in this way we can, not only examine these texts'
representation of the Imperial policies, but also issues related to the state of being
subaltern and hegemonized could be elaborated on through Marxist approach and the
ideas of Antonio Gramsci. The psychological aspects of the poet and the characters in the
works of the African American writers, I believe are very essential when we try to deal
with a nation who has been traumatised throughout history. For this reason I believe the
psychoanalytic criticism should be one of the basics of any further research in the field of
Diaspora and African American literature. The new Aesthetics school also could be
employed for a thorough textual analysis in order to find the aesthetics that are behind the
texts of such writers.

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 References

Bressler, C., 2011. Literary Criticism. Boston: Longman.

Dobie, Ann, 2015.  Theory into Practice An Introduction To Literary Criticism.

Dworkin, I. (2012). "Near the Congo": Langston Hughes and the Geopolitics of
Internationalist Poetry. American Literary History, 24(4), 631-657. Retrieved January 23,
2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23358448

Milne, I., 2009. Literary Movements For Students. Detroit, Mich.: Gale.

PRESLEY, J. (1963). The American Dream of Langston Hughes. Southwest Review, 48(4),

380-386. Retrieved January 23, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/43467552

Westover, J. (2002) ‘AFRICA/AMERICA: Fragmentation and Diaspora in the Work of

Langston Hughes’, Callaloo, 25(4), p. 1207. doi: 10.1353/cal.2002.0174.

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