Identity as Self-defence

Langston Hughes as the Voice of the Voiceless

Abstract

This paper aims to reveal the presence of the black American poet Langston Hughes through his poetic imagination in resuscitating and reasserting the identity of the black writers of the Harlem Renaissance in American society. Almost without exception, Hughes’s poems revolve around the essence of black identity in American society. Emphatically, his poems raise the question of accepting and embracing black identity without showing any sense of bashfulness or diffidence. The non-reconciled spirit of Hughes always functions in an oppositional form of resistance and non-reconciliation. The bitterness of his soul reminds his peers to indefatigably cling to their identities in order to prove their presence and existence in American society. As a humanist, secular, un-dogmatic and contrapuntal poet, who believes in the multiplicity of voices, Hughes profoundly confirms that Africanism and Whiteness are inextricably tied. They are two sides of the same coin that cannot be extricated and together conflate to the wholeness of American society. Undoubtedly, Hughes’ poetic imagination could help in reconstructing and reclaiming the identity of his nation by nurturing hope and optimism in the consciousness of the African Americans.