“Hold on to your dreams, for without them, life is a bird with broken wings that cannot fly” This is one of the most remarkable quotes from Langston Hughes, who urges his audience to hold on. to 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 achievements. One of his major achievements was “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”. He has won literary prizes for his poems, novels and short stories; founding theaters; teaching at universities and a major contributor 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 Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Illuminating 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 looking for work and was not always in his life. He was therefore raised by his maternal grandmother, Mary Sampson Patterson Leary Langston. He had mixed Native American, French and African heritage. When Hughes was five, on a trip with his mother, he first entered a bookstore and fell in love with reading. This 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. He got his first job that same year, at the age of eight, cleaning the lobby and toilets of an old hotel. This experience influenced him later in life, notably when he wrote the poem "Brass Spittoons". Around 1914, he went to live with his mother, her new husband and his half-brother in Lincoln, Illinois. After a year, they moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he attended Central High School and enjoyed our successful years. He was on the honor roll every month, was on the track team and was editor of the yearbook. When Hughes was seventeen, he traveled to Toluca, Mexico, to spend the summer with his father, Jim Hughes. Hughes hadn't seen his father since he was a toddler and was very excited to make the trip. But while Hughes was with his father, there was no sort of connection between the two. Jim was a money-grubbing man who was cold and wanted to be respected. During his junior high and high school years, Hughes was not as happy living with his father. During his senior year he wrote a poem "When Sue Wears Red" about a girl he had seen at a ball and critics praised the poem as the first poet to celebrate the beauty of women black. In July 1920, Hughes visited his father in Mexico again and while crossing the Mississippi River to St. Louis, Missouri, he wrote fifteen lines on an envelope dedicated to a black leader, WEB Du Bois (1860 -1963). and was titled “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” and speaks of the deep 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 popularity as an elegant expression of pleasure in the spirituality and tolerance of black people around the world. He continued to write poetry and published it in..