Essay on Hardships Expressed in Hughes On the Road and Mother to Son

Hardships uttered in Hughes On the Road and pose to Son black citizens who stand in the United States have experienced a tough vitality through personal experiences. They have managed to obtain basic civil rights--a struggle that has spanned many centuries (Mabunda 311). Langston Hughes, author of the short story On the Road and the song bring to Son, often illustrated in his writing the hardships experienced by the characters--products of African American life history in the United States. While Hughes and other puppylike African-American authors wanted to define and celebrate black art and culture, they were similarly responsible for changing the preconceived notions of most Americans erroneous ideas of black life (Mabunda 696). The cultural aspects of Hughes poems exhibited life as an African-American in the late 1910s to the primaeval 1960s. His views, like many writers in his era, came directly from personal experience, which provided the reader with a sense of commu nication that illustrated--with art rather than essay--the ills of the racist world. L. Mpho Mabunda proclaims that the issues and grim realities of the African-American could be experienced through the lives of characters and in verse, and the message delivered more subtly and effectively (696). The overall theme and purpose of On the Road and Mother to Son are centered around an illustration of the hardships experienced by most African-American citizens in the early part of the century. Both genres diagrammatically detail the lifestyle and environment in which the African-American lived. In the twentieth century, many of the black communities in America have existed in a perpetual state of crisis (Black American). According to Kenneth Clark in his add... ... Robinson. The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and band of the Colored People of the United States. crude York Arno P, 1968. Henry McNeal Turner. Online. Internet. 24 Apr. 1998. Hughes, Langston. Mother to Son. Bridges Li terature across Cultures. Eds. Gilbert H. Muller and bum A. Williams. New York McGraw-Hill, 1994. 52. ---. On the Road. Bridges Literature across Cultures. Eds. Gilbert H. Muller and John A.Williams. New York McGRaw-Hill, 1994. 845-8. Mabunda, L. Mpho, ed. The African American Almanac. 7th ed. Detroit, MI Gale research Inc., 1997. Miller, R. Baxter, and Evelyn Nettles. Langston Hughes. elliptic Dictionary of American Literary Biography The Age of Maturity, 1929-1941. Detroit, MI Gale Research Inc., 1989. 150-71. Quarles, Benjamin. The Negro in the Making of America. London Collier-Macmillan Ltd., 1969.