Me and the Mule

Langston Hughes

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1959

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Background

Literary Context

Langston Hughes’s poetry is nearly synonymous with the Harlem Renaissance, a period of time that lasted from approximately 1920 through the mid 1930s. Although the movement was associated with and named after the Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem, it was really an African diaspora revival of cultural, literary, artistic, and musical forms that spanned the globe. As a Black man and poet living in Harlem at the height of the movement, Langston Hughes was at its center; his work—both early and late in his career— is obviously informed by the ideals of the Harlem Renaissance.

Harlem, as the center of African American Northern migration in the United States, was considered the epicenter for the renaissance of African cultural arts. At the time, many African American families moved from the Southern part of the United States to cities and towns in the Midwest or Northeast to escape the racism associated with Jim Crow and segregation laws that followed the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era. This sweep of immigration, which took place in the early 20th century, is often referred to as the Great Migration. Hughes’s family was one of many that moved northward during the Great Migration, which makes his work’s connection to the movement multi-layered.

Geographical Context

In a separate, yet connected, contextual framework, the geographical context of Harlem as the epicenter of the cultural arts movement influenced Hughes’s poetry. The history of African enslavement in the United States, as well as the effects of racist legislation that followed the abolition of slavery, appear in Hughes’s work and the work of other Harlem Renaissance artists. The rhythm and music of the Harlem Renaissance and the birth of jazz poetry specifically, can be traced to the African music forms that many enslaved people brought with them from Africa, and developed in the United States.

However, Harlem’s artistic ambiance was also inspired by a myriad of other influences, including the cultural effects of World War I and the Great Depression. As European immigration to American metroplexes like New York City ceased during World War I, the need for labor in those areas drove many African Americans to move to the area in search of economic prospects. Simultaneously, as Black WWI veterans returned to the US, they felt that their wartime achievements were undervalued by their home country, which led to political and social activism in the late 1910s and early 1920s. These political and social shifts in the fight for civil rights for African Americans inspired a lot of the artistic activism found in the literature of the Harlem Renaissance.