Harlem as a Haven: Examining the Intersection of Form and Ideology in Langston Hughes’ “Theme for English B” Genesis Taber College

When conjuring images of the Roaring’s Twenties, especially if literarily inclined, one inevitably thinks Harlem and invariably thinks the Harlem Renaissance. It is perhaps reckless to say, yet not without the support of arguments bearing to its factuality, the credit for whom was the first to creatively express the perhaps hitherto ineffable condition of the Black American modern experience falls justly to Langston Hughes. As this burgeoning moment of cultural renaissance came into incipience, black artists wrestled with what Harlem ideologically signified, sounded, and looked like. Arnold Rampersad in his article “Langston Hughes and Approaches to Modernism in the Harlem Renaissance” notes one of the “principles tensions” that plagued The Harlem School was the diametrically opposing framework “between radicalism of political and racial thought, on one hand, and, on the other, a bone-deep commitment to conservatism of form.” (55). Yet in Hughes, Rampersad argues, a reconciliation of this contention is found through his capacity to “identify the black modern, recognize that it was not the same as the white modern, and to structure his art…along the lines of that black modernism.” (61). This sentiment is reflected in one of the...