By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘I, Too’ is a 1924 poem by the American poet Langston Hughes (1901-67), a leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance who was nicknamed ‘the Bard of Harlem’. In part a response to Walt Whitman, ‘I, Too’ sees Hughes asserting that he, and other black American voices like his, also ‘sing’ of America and are America, too, even though American society treats black people differently.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Although he is probably better known as a poet, Langston Hughes (1901-67), a leading writer of the Harlem Renaissance, also wrote some of the finest short stories of the early twentieth century, and ‘Red-Headed Baby’ is one of his best.
‘Red-Headed Baby’ was published in Hughes’ 1934 collection The Ways of White Folks, which examines the relations between white Americans and African Americans with sympathy and humour. In just a few pages, Hughes sketches out an encounter between a red-headed man and his former girlfriend, an African-American woman living in Florida.