Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance
The essence of life is captured in the small, candid moments. From heartbeats and the sounds of the trains running on the tracks, to the billboards hanging over Edsa and decrepit buildings, the things we absorb tell us about the world and the current socioeconomic and cultural context we live in. In the Philippines, people often look for what they need to survive, and the ideals of the future are based on what our colonizers gave us. We often focus on the vast future and look at where we think the grass is greener.
However, Langston Hughes finds beauty in the simple things and in his history, race, and heritage. He was born in 1902 and he lived in the Harlem Renaissance, through World War 2, and the early Cold War. During his time Jim Crowe laws and segregation was still in place in the United States, meaning that black people in America were heavily discriminated against. Hughes' family rejected their black heritage and most of Langston Hughes' poems were a response to this active rejection of black culture. Langston Hughes captured things from their run down apartments, to the rhythm of jazz, to the rivers flowing through the first civilizations they can be traced back to. His embrace of black culture, shown in poems like The Negro Speaks of Rivers and Harlem, lead to inspiring Martin Luther King Jr. and the rest of the civil rights movement. He shows the resilience of minorities, their ability to make something amazing despite their oppression, and the capacity to rise from oppression, a message more poignant then ever.
While I am not black, Langston Hughes' poems made me realise I ought to embrace my culture and the people who build it more. That I can find something to be proud of in myself. His writing reminds me of the reasons minorities keep fighting for their place in the world. We have a voice to offer and a say in our future, and we deserve to look at the little moments in our lives with joy and happiness in being ourselves: from the dying technicolor jeepneys and the sizzle of sisig in a pan, to the strings playing kundiman. In spite of all the neocolonialism and corruption, I want to be able still look at the sun and three stars and find hope for our people, like he did.