The Writing Career of Langston Hughes

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Langston Hughes began his writing career as one would when looking at a map for the very first time, on one uncertain road at a time. This indecisiveness paid off and it allowed him to find his creative, yet unrestricted voice in the forms of poems, short plays and novels. Langston Hughes' literary works, though varied in their writing styles, matched seamlessly with the audience who read them back when they were first published and even still so today. For just as the readers are tied to their personal heritage, they are in fact, however, separate and unique individuals within their particular race, varying in different shades, shapes, forms, and ways of thinking. This very likeness is reflected in Langston Hughes' diverse writing styles. Some were written to reach the radical leftwing communist half a world away in Russia, while others were written to pierce the hearts of the disenfranchised people living in Harlem.

In each piece of his works, it was as if Langston Hughes did not directly choose his style of writing, instead, it chose him based on what was happening either in his personal life or the injustice that was being broadcast throughout his surroundings. His writings spoke from the inner most chambers of his heart, as they flowed down through the pen's ink tip, and poured out onto the crisp white pages, soaking deep into the woven texture.

Langston Hughes' creativity displayed in his works showcased an artist whose passion for his craft derived from a deeply rooted source within him. In his early writings in a magazine called the Belfry Owl at Central high school in 1918, he published his first style of writings in free verse, which paid homage to Carl Sandburg.

Even during his teenage years, Langston Hughes' voice began to develop into a mighty thundering roar. Back then he gathered the experiences of the aches and pains felt from witnessing his family being taken advantage of by the landlords in the overcrowded neighborhoods that were being used to house Black families. He would write about the disfigurement of his stepfather who worked too many overtime shifts at the local steel mill until his body simply would not allow him to return to the heat of, "The mills... That grind away the lives of men..." (Hughes, 1958, p. ...