Langston Hughes is the author of The Negro and the racial mountain and Theme for English B . Hughes was born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri, a descendant of noticeable abolitionists. His racial heritage was a mix of Indian, African, and French. Langston Hughes was an American poet, essayist, playwright, and short story writer. He is still considered one of the most distinguished contributors to American literature in the 20th century. He rose to fame during the Harlem Renaissance and continued to produce experimental and groundbreaking work for the next several decades. Hughes was known for vocalizing the concerns of working-class African Americans. His work was deeply influenced by jazz, and he often wrote in a simple and straightforward fashion, sometimes even using the vernacular.
The poem "Theme for English B " was written during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, African American authors, poets, musicians, and artists pursued new ways to express the black experience in America. The poet Langston Hughes worried that the search for critical and commercial success might tempt black artists to compromise their ideals and their distinctive racial and cultural identity. In his Poem Theme for English B Hughes makes the point that people of different races are alike in many ways.
Hughes asserts that he writes about racial issues. He writes about racial problems because for the black, everything in America is a racial question. To do else is to reject that sense of identity and to reject that sense of identity is to say that you don’t want to be a Negro poet or a Negro novelist or a Negro musician or Negro dramatist.
While Hughes uses repetition, alliteration, and assonance to create patterns of sound, he:
doesn't use a formal rhyme scheme
