Mother to Sun: An Analysis “Mother to Son” is a poem written by African American author and poet Langston Hughes. Originally published in 1922, when Hughes was only 21 and just beginning his career as a writer, it was not until 1926 when it was republished with a number of Hughes’ other poems, in his book The Weary Blues that it gained widespread notice (Gates et al.). By that time, Hughes had become quite successful as a writer, especially in stories about African American culture, customs, and history (Gates et al.).
Moreover, at that time in the mid-1920, African American culture was in the middle of a particularly production period known as the “Harlem Renaissance”, in which writers, artists, musicians, and intellectuals, including Hughes himself, had gathered together in the Harlem section of New York City actively communicated, competed and collaborated with one another to express what is was to be an African American in America.
While Hughes’ work covered the range of African American social experience, one of his primary focuses was on exploring the how African American inspired and motivated themselves to carry on despite a mainstream culture, politics, and belief system that saw them as inferior, and worked in practice to continuously keep them oppressed (Gates et al.). “Mother to Son” one of Hughes’ most well-known illustrations of these themes of inspiration and motivation that, as the title suggests, an African American mother gives to her son on how to