I was reading about the many critics, black and white, of author Langston Hughes. What I surmise is that he gave an accurate description of the lives of the every day black person. He did not pick only the highlights. Hughes wrote of the struggles the average black citizen and what they did just to survive. He was open and honest in a time when it was safe to do so.
One of Langston Hughes's influences was another black poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar, who had is own critics. It seems that the black writer's harshest critics are other blacks. In my view, it boils down to not writing what they say you should write or being open and honest about what is really going on. If one is honest black life wasn't always a bowl of cherries. Coincidentally, Hughes, and Dunbar are two of my writing influences.
Langston Hughes wrote plays, short stories, prose, and essays besides poetry. I need to get some of his works and read up on his tremendous body of work. It's ironic that despite all the criticism Hughes endured, he's one of the most recognizable and revered poets of all time.
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