Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. What do you know about Langston Hughes? Can you name one or two works by him?

Teaching Suggestion: Langston Hughes is probably the most famous figure associated with the Harlem Renaissance—a flowering of African American art and literature in the 1920s and 30s. At the time, Hughes was primarily a poet and often incorporated elements of traditional African American storytelling, dialect, and music (as well as the newer genre of jazz) into his writing. Some of his more famous pieces include “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” “The Weary Blues,” “I, Too,” and “Let America Be America Again.” Students are less likely to know that Hughes also penned novels, plays, and short stories, or that he continued working well into the civil rights era (“Thank You, M’am” was published in 1958).

• “Langston Hughes”: Biography video discussing Hughes’s life and significance to the Harlem Renaissance
• “An Introduction to the Harlem Renaissance” from the Poetry Foundation

2. How would you define the “American Dream”? Are there any ideas, objects, people, etc.