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Chapter 3 - His Ways with White Folks

Langston Hughes and Literary Patronage

from Part I - Singing America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2022

By
Emily Bernard
Edited by
Vera M. Kutzinski  and
Anthony Reed
Vera M. Kutzinski
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University, Tennessee
Anthony Reed
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University, Tennessee
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Summary

This chapter discusses the dynamics between Black artists and white patrons during the Harlem Renaissance told through the turbulent relationship between Langston Hughes and his literary “Godmother,” Charlotte Osgood Mason. The chapter begins with a discussion of Hughes’s groundbreaking 1926 essay, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” and explores the complex connection between the independent spirit of the sentiments expressed in that essay to the deeper acknowledgment of the perennial pressures exerted by white literary gatekeepers and Black artists that dominate some of his later work, particularly his 1934 short story collection, The Ways of White Folks.

Keywords

Black artistliteraryfreedomwhite normative gazepatronage
Type
Chapter
Information
Langston Hughes in Context , pp. 33 - 41
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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