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Full-Text Articles in African American Studies
Park Blues Langston Hughes, Racial Exclusion, And The Park Ballad, Margaret Konkol
Park Blues Langston Hughes, Racial Exclusion, And The Park Ballad, Margaret Konkol
English Faculty Publications
This chapter draws attention to the lack of parks and nature recreation amenities during the 1920s and 1930s in predominantly African American city neighborhoods through Langston Hughes’s political poetry, specifically his blues-inflected ballad “Park Bench,” as well as “Chicago’s Black Belt” “Restrictive Covenants,” and “One Way Ticket.” Through the figure of the tramp/vagrant/bum, “Park Bench” voices a protest against inequality mapped into city space. Asserting that access to nature should be a fundamental condition of a democratic society, the poem situates the park bench as a charged site for public dialogue. The chapter argues that this poem and other Hughes …
"Aunt Sue's Stories": The Use Of Folklore In The Teaching Of Literature, Daryl Cumber Dance
"Aunt Sue's Stories": The Use Of Folklore In The Teaching Of Literature, Daryl Cumber Dance
English Faculty Publications
This poem by Langston Hughes, one of America's most prolific poets, suggests the appeal of folklore to the young. Aunt Sue's stories inspire the response that every teacher of literature aspires to elicit from his students. I would like to suggest that the most natural thing in the world for the teacher is to capitalize on this appeal of folklore to help develop an interest in and an appreciation for recorded literature. Folklore can do much to help the student bridge the gap between his own world and what seems to many to be the alien world of Shakespeare. Our …