Heroic "Hussies" and "Brilliant Queers": Genderracial Resistance in the Works of Langston Hughes

Abstract

In his writings, Langston Hughes explores convergence of race and gender in Black men's and women's lives, questioning binary constructions of identity and exploring sensuality in relation to social change. These are pages, as bell hooks suggests, that lay marked on bedside tables, that become worn with searching fingers, that represent something other than the Langston Hughes most folks read or remember (193). They are poems and stories that deal with love among Black men and women, nature, romantic quandary, mother-daughter and fatherson relations, friendship, and silences. In discussing Black male and female identity, Hughes speaks of ways gender uniquely colors these experiences. He writes in a manner which could be described as genderracial, emphasizing how gender and racial identity are intertwined. In an often cited passage from Negro Artist and Racial Mountain, Hughes comments, One of most promising of young Negro poets said to me once, 'I want to be a poet, not a Negro poet.' ... I was sorry young man said that, for no great has ever been afraid of being himself. And I doubted then, that, with his desire to run away spiritually from his race, this boy would ever be a great poet (692). To Hughes, identity is inseparable from, and indeed central to, one's artistry. His work is strengthened by a poetic imagination which enters of those with varying experiences. Hughes's images are at times disturbing, also comforting, alternately sad and joyous, and directly connected to his identity as a Black man who heard voices of many--white and of Color, male and female, gay and straight, within and without himself. Hughes and Black Consciousness Suggesting a useful approach to Hughes's genderracial concerns, Frances Beale's 1970 essay Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female comments on tendency of social movements to privilege one liberation struggle over another in their vision of change. She cites women's movement's dismissal of Black women's concerns in their drive to advance status of white women, and Black Power's assertion of Black manhood through subordination of Black women. And she queries, Are there any parallels between this struggle and movement on part of Black women for total emancipation? (98). Deborah King expands on Beale and borrows from W. E. B. Du Bois's theory of double to describe Black women's multiple consciousness (Multiple 292). She concurs that the gender-only perspective alone is insufficient for understanding Black female oppression (Race 4) and asserts a form of which occupies a both/and holistic orientation (9), a which she identifies as polyrhythmic. Drawing connections between African and African American expressive art forms and Black consciousness, King explains: For Black women, interrelationship among strips of strong contrast in multiple, counter rhythms which produces music, ... dance or quilts replicates interdependence of individuals and other elements of cosmos, all of which have strong, contrasting natures in an ever-changing yet stable whole (Race 10). Gender and race converge for Hughes's female characters, who confront genderracial myths in their exploration of identity. bell hooks notes that Hughes often invokes voice of a Black woman, and that he appears comfortable in this fictive transvestism (194). In Southern Mammy Sings, Hughes takes on a female voice to contrast genderracial stereotype of mammy with reality of Black domestic work: Miss Gardner's in her garden Miss Yardman's in her yard Miss Michaelmas is at de mass And I am gettin' tired! Lawd! I am gettin' tired! (Selected 162) The form of poem indicates blues as muscial form representative of a Black woman's experience working in white folks' kitchens, contrasting sharply with images of cheerful, singing mammy seen in minstrel show or on big screen, and in literature. …