Hughes wrote sixteen books of poems, two novels, three collections of short stories, four volumes of "editorial" and "documentary" fiction, twenty plays, children's poetry, musicals and operas, three autobiographies, a dozen of television and radio scripts, and magazine articles. ... The poem is about a dream that he saw a million black faces, such as his own. ... In the autobiography, "The Big Sea," Hughes writes about a boy of a poor family in the Midwest. Later on the boy becomes a successful business man's son, and travels around the world. The boy becomes a cook and waiter i...

• Word Count: 841
• Approx Pages: 3
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Began writing creatively while still a boy 1. ... Short Stories and Novels a. He wrote novels, short stories, poetry and plays 1. ... Encouraged black Americans to support the United States in its goals abroad VI. ... Involved with Williams Grant Still, the first black composer in the U.S. 1. ...

• Word Count: 288
• Approx Pages: 1
• Grade Level: High School

She is well known for her exceptional novel, "Their Eyes Were Watching God." ... The two novels embody many similar concerns and methods that characterize the black women's literary tradition. ... Hurston released her first novel, Jonah's Gourd Vine, in 1934. ... By the mid-1940s, Hurston's writing career was faltering, and she was arrested and charged with molesting a ten-year-old boy and his two friends. ... "God does love black people, doesn't He?" ...

• Word Count: 1464
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

One of the most interesting aspects of the novel is the excellent contrast in characters that it affords. ... Siles versus Harriet and Jim Boy. The novel is very slow, even tedious, reading in its early chapters, but once it gains its momentum it moves as swiftly as a jazz rhythm. Its chapters, emerging ever more clearly and challenging as the novel proceeds, gives it this rhythm. Every character in the novel, with the exception of Mr. ...

• Word Count: 2112
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

She taught him about famous black people in society in the early 1900's. ... Hughes wrote novels, stories, poems, and plays about Negro life. ... It is very dark and a boy, later known as Roger, tries to snatch a woman's purse. ... Clarence gets very upset when the little boy grabs his leg. This boy is Clarence's son. ...

• Word Count: 1559
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

His parents, James Hughes and Carolina Mercer Langston, separated when he was a very young boy in 1903. ... At night they would read him stories from such works from popular black authors such as W.E.B. ... They would also tell him stories of black history, and encourage him to try to make positive changes someday. ... In his autobiographical novel, Hughes said as a young boy, "For the first time loneliness strikes me, strikes me terribly settling down in a dull ache round about, in the dusk." ... Even as a young boy he was ready to take chances in life. ...

• Word Count: 1483
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

Langston Hughes Langston Hughes opened his first volume of poems with the expression of his- and every Negro's- "soul world": "I am a Negro: /Black as the night is black, /Black like the depths of my Africa" (Emanuel 17). ... Hughes spent a lifetime illuminating that world through poems, stories, novels, lectures, and various other literary forms - with virtuosity and understanding so unmatched that he has been unofficially granted the title as Negro Poet Laureate and Dean of Negro Writers in America. ... The city opened a new world to the small town boy from Kansas. ... Langston was...

• Word Count: 1325
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Hughes never married and several of his friends were homosexual, among them Carl Van Vechten, who wrote the controversial novel Nigger Heaven (1926) therefore causing an unrelevant speculation about his sexuality. ... Hughes' poetry announced to the world that the streets of black America were culturally rich, vibrant and fiercely poetic. ... For example "Mother to Son- the mother says "So boy don't you turn back, don't set you down on the steps cause you find its kinder harder, don't you fall now-. ... The black man that is lynched in the poem could not be free in this ...

• Word Count: 1518
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School