National university of uzbekistan named after mirzo ulugbek faculty of foreign philology

Harlem Renaissance Poems and Literary Criticism Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes

• Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and other young African-American writers and artists were part of the “Harlem Renaissance” of the Twenties. In many ways an expression of the vision of W.E.B. DuBois, the Harlem Renaissance saw “the talented tenth” expressing itself and creating distinctive African-American literature and culture, although it also saw disagreement and controversy over whether its art had to be unique to be African-American.
• How do Cullen’s and Hughes’ poems speak to you—what do they say about the African-American experience and the writers of the Harlem Renaissance?
• In The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain, Langston Hughes argues that an African-American poet must be an African-American poet; to aspire to anything else is simply attempting to ignore one’s roots, as he felt the black middle class did. Do you agree with Hughes, and why or why not?