Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes

Zora Neal Hurston and Langston Hughes wrote their literary best during the Negro Renaissance.   They created characters that depicted the actual lifestyles of African Americans during this era, taken mainly from their personal life experiences .   They addressed issues such as identity among African Americans   because of the color of their skin, African-American family life during this time, and the struggle that African Americans went through for equality.
In an era where being “black” was some sort of stigmata these two writers were a part of a time where they appreciated and praised who they were. They brought to light the internal struggles that African Americans had concerning who they were and wrote of pride to be what they were. In Langston Hughes’ poem “Mulatto”, he tells the story of the father-son struggle of a biracial boy. Hughes, being biracial himself, depicts a boy not accepted by his father nor half siblings. He wants to be accepted but is continually rejected. His father rejects him saying “You are my son! Like Hell!”(Hughes, Line 5, P873)   The white children of his father say “Naw you aint my brother.”(Hughes, Line 26, P874)   Being “high yellow” or “light-skinned” was just as unacceptable as being dark skinned. If you were light you were called “A little yellow bastard boy” (Hughes, Line 44, P874) If you were dark skinned the same acceptance issues and internal struggles existed. In Zora Neale Hurston’s “How It Feels To Be Colored Me”, she form characters herself. She talks of the pride that she had as a child being colored until she turned age 13.”I remember the very day that I became colored.” (Hurston, P538)   She speaks of not realizing a difference in color until she was sent to school in Jacksonville, Florida. She says she suffered a “sea change. I was not Zora of Orange County anymore; I was now a little colored girl.” (P538)   She speaks of the changes she felt in her heart in this surrounding and how she feels her race. “I am a dark rock...