A Quote by Kasi Lemmons
I wanted to pay homage to someone who was such an important literary figure in my life. I think Langston Hughes would be proud of the picture Black Nativity, yet it's a contemporary story about a family living in Harlem. I named the lead character Langston, put a little bit of poetry in there, and some Langston Hughes quotes, and, of course, his stage play, Black Nativity.
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Black Nativity certainly lends itself to reinterpretation. It was kind of designed to be infused with the creativity of whoever is putting it on, and every performance is a little bit different. So, this is definitely my version of Black Nativity. It has its own story, which is a family story. Langston Hughes' Black Nativity informs it, and is contained within it.
When I was in high school, I remember writing a research paper, and the teacher said I should write about Langston Hughes. I felt as if I was the only black dude who didn't like Langston Hughes. He didn't seem as dark and layered as someone like Flannery O'Connor.
I would love to do an anthology show based on the character of Jesse B. Semple that Langston Hughes wrote about. He's sort of a Forrest Gump character in the midst of 20th century Harlem.
I wanted to be Langston Hughes.
[ Mrs. James, my fifth-grade teacher] introduced us to these authors early on and taught us that their literature is important. Langston Hughes - we read his poetry. We studied who W.E.B DuBois was. And so she whetted our appetites.
If you think about black art, all black art, whether it's Invisible Man or whether it's James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Zora Hurston, or Richard Wright, they all deal with elements of identity and trying to humanize our experience and our struggle in the world where people have been indifferent to who we are and what we are. It's basically just saying that our lives have meaning.
I didn't know who Langston Hughes was till he met me backstage.
Suicide Note: The calm, Cool face of the river Asked me for a kiss. -Langston Hughes
If you're going to get up to Walt Whitman and Robert Frost and Langston Hughes and Sylvia Plath you've got to figure out how you put people in possession of their heritage. To do that you have to talk about how they're being taught, and the imagination of community the people who are running our government have.
I remember when Langston Hughes used to write a column in black newspapers around this character Jesse B. Semple. He always used that as a voice, sometimes in comic ways, of having everyday people's voice come through this common folk hero, who was an ordinary working guy. He would talk about anything from police brutality to the Korean War. Those kinds of expression and identification are no longer prevalent in our popular culture.
If I had to name one book that has had the most lasting influence on my work, I would pick 'The Big Sea' by Langston Hughes.
All black art is always judged to illuminate our experience and prove that our stories and our history and our lives matter. And that goes back to Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston - take your pick.
In the middle of the next century, when the literary establishment will reflect the multicultural makeup of this country and not be dominated by assimiliationists with similar tastes, from similar backgrounds, and of similar pretensions, Langston Hughes will be to the twentieth century what Walt Whitman was to the nineteenth.
Music and the blues, they have taught me a lot. I think in this book, 'Book Of Hours,' there is this blues sensibility. There are moments of humor even in the sorrow, and I'm really interested in the way that the blues have that tragic-comic view of life - what Langston Hughes called 'laughing to keep from crying.'
When I first knew that I wanted to rap I was seven years old and I lost the talent show. It was like spoken word or something. My mom made me do it. It was a Langston Hughes poem. The girl that came on after me, she wound up winning. She was a singer.
We expect kids to go straight from Shel Silverstein to William Shakespeare. There needs to be a bridge of relatable, fun, rhythmic verse that gets kids to cross over, so to speak, so they can appreciate Mary Oliver and Naomi Shihab Nye and Langston Hughes.
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