The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” In (1926) was a short essay written by poet Langston Hughes for The Nation magazine. It became the manifesto of the Harlem Renaissance. In it Hughes said that black artists in America should stop copying whites, that they will never create anything great that way. Instead they should be proud of who they are, proud to be black, and draw from black culture. Not “white is right” but, as we would now say, “Black is beautiful”.
The anecdote tells about the censorship of a book. In some countries of the world, government forces impose selection criteria on artistic and cultural production.
This episode is the fictionalization of a situation of repression that has happened repeatedly in history. In the famous book by Ray Bradbury "Fahrenheit 451" the burning of books is one of the central themes of the plot.
The fragment describes the situation of censorship and burning of a book that belongs to the narrator. Instantly produces the reader's empathy with this character whose work has been destroyed.
