“Hold on to your dreams, for without them life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly” This is one of the most important quotes by Langston Hughes, urging his audience to resist their dreams. Langston Hughes was one of the most famous and celebrated African-American poets and novelists of the 20th century. He was an American novelist, poet, social activist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. When he was younger, he moved to New York to build his career. Hughes was an early developer of the new literary art called jazz poetry. He had many successes. One of his biggest hits was "The Negro Speaks of Rivers". He has won literary awards for his poems, novels and short stories; founding theaters; teaching at universities and contributing significantly to the Harlem Renaissance and the appearance of African Americans in American literature. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Illumination of the life and legacy of an iconic literary figure James Mercer Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri on February 1, 1902 to James Nathaniel Hughes and Carrie Mercer Langston. His parents separated when Langston was young and his father moved to Mexico. His mother traveled a lot to look for work and was not always in his life, so he was raised by his maternal grandmother, Mary Sampson Patterson Leary Langston. He had mixed Native American, French, and African heritage. When Hughes was five years old, he entered a bookshop for the first time on a trip with his mother and fell in love with reading. That was just the beginning of his love affair with words. After his grandmother's death in 1910, Hughes lived with his grandmother's friends, the Reeds, who had no children of their own. He got his first job that same year, at age eight, cleaning the lobby and bathrooms of an old hotel. This experience influenced him later in life, particularly when he wrote the poem "Brass Spittoons". Around 1914 she went to live with her mother, her new husband, and her stepbrother in Lincoln, Illinois. After a year they moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he attended Central High School and our successful years were experienced. He made the honor roll every month, was on the track team and was editor of the yearbook. When Hughes was seventeen he went to Toluca, Mexico, to spend the summer with his father, Jim Hughes. Hughes hadn't seen his father since he was very little and was really excited to make the trip. But while Hughes was with his father, there was no bond whatsoever between the two. Jim was a man who wanted to make money, was cold and wanted to gain respect. During his junior and senior years of high school, Hughes wasn't as happy living with his father. In his senior year he wrote a poem "When Sue Wears Red" about a girl he saw at a dance and critics would praise the poem as the first poet to celebrate the beauty of black women. In July 1920, Hughes again visited his father in Mexico and while crossing the Mississippi River towards St. Louis, Missouri, he wrote fifteen lines on an envelope and dedicated them to a black leader, WEB Du Bois (1860-1963) and is It was titled "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and speaks to the profound and important spiritual role that rivers play or have played in the lives of black people. When the poem was published a year later, it gained much attention as an elegant expression of delight in the spirituality and tolerance of black people around the world. He continued to write poems and published them in Belfrey Owl, a famous newspaper that had already shown the impact of another famous African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. The first was in 1921.