Deir al Asad comprehensive

English homework

Activity on the poem As I grew older- By Langston Hughes

Submitted by – haitam al salih

Submitted to -Amira Asadi

table of contents

the poem——————————————————————————————3

about the author————————————————————————————5

a letter to the author———————————————————————————7

my dream——————————————————————————————9

It was a long time ago.
I have almost forgotten my dream.
But it was there then,
In front of me,
Bright like a sun—
My dream.
And then the wall rose,
Rose slowly,
Slowly,
Between me and my dream.
Rose until it touched the sky—
The wall.
Shadow.
I am black.
I lie down in the shadow.
No longer the light of my dream before me,
Above me.
Only the thick wall.
Only the shadow.
My hands!
My dark hands!
Break through the wall!
Find my dream!
Help me to shatter this darkness,
To smash this night,
To break this shadow
Into a thousand lights of sun,
Into a thousand whirling dreams
Of sun!

about the author

Born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri, Langston Hughes grew up mainly in Lawrence, Kansas, but also lived in Illinois, Ohio, and Mexico.

 By the time Hughes enrolled at Columbia University in New York, he had already launched his  literary career with his poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” in the Crisis, edited by W E. B. Du  Bois. He had also committed himself both to writing and to writing mainly about African  Americans.

Hughes’s sense of dedication was instilled in him most of all by his maternal grandmother,  Mary Langston, whose first husband had died at Harpers Ferry as a member of John Brown’s  band, and whose second husband (Hughes’s grandfather) had also been a militant abolitionist.  Another important family figure was John Mercer Langston, a brother of Hughes’s grandfather who was one of the best-known black Americans of the nineteenth century. At the same time, Hughes struggled with a sense of desolation fostered by parental neglect. He himself recalled being driven early by his loneliness ‘to books, and the wonderful world in books.’

Leaving Columbia in 1922, Hughes spent the next three years in a succession of menial jobs. But he also traveled abroad. He worked on a freighter down the west coast of Africa and lived for several months in Paris before returning to the United States late in 1924. By this time, he was well known in African American literary circles as a gifted young poet.

His major early influences were Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, as well as the black poets Paul Laurence Dunbar, a master of both dialect and standard verse, and Claude McKay, a radical socialist who also wrote accomplished lyric poetry. However, Sandburg, who Hughes later called “my guiding star,” was decisive in leading him toward free verse and a radically democratic modernist aesthetic.

His devotion to black music led him to novel fusions of jazz and blues with traditional verse in his first two books, The Weary Blues (1926) and Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927). His emphasis on lower-class black life, especially in the latter, led to harsh attacks on him in the black press. With these books, however, he established himself as a major force of the Harlem Renaissance. In 1926, in the Nation, he provided the movement with a manifesto when he skillfully argued the need for both race pride and artistic independence in his most memorable essay, ‘The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.”

By this time, Hughes had enrolled at the historically black Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, from which he would graduate in 1929. In 1927 he began one of the most important relationships of his life, with his patron Mrs. Charlotte Mason, or “Godmother,” who generously supported him for two years. She supervised the writing of his first novel, Not Without Laughter (1930)–about a sensitive, black midwestern boy and his struggling family. However, their relationship collapsed about the time the novel appeared, and Hughes sank into a period of intense personal unhappiness and disillusionment.

One result was his firm turn to the far left in politics. During a year (1932-1933) spent in the Soviet Union, he wrote his most radical verse. A year in Carmel, California, led to a collection of short stories, The Ways of White Folks (1934). This volume is marked by pessimism about race relations, as well as a sardonic realism.

a letter to the author

 Dear Langhston hughes,

I am writing to you to express my great appreciation for your  poem  which you have released called  As I Grew Older.

I have found the poem to be fascinating and a lesson at the same time.

your poem  has changed my perspective on many things and has broadened my view on a lot of things as well.

i learnd a lot from it  how to never give up and how to be pateint and to try break the obstacels that faces my in the life

you are a very special person ‘ i wish if all the people havr the same point of view like yours .

Again, I would just like to express my deepest thanks that you created this literary wonder which has changed my life for the better.

I wish you all the best.

i

my dream

   People in the world have their goals, hopes and dreams no matter they are children, teenagers or adults

and thier is a lot of ways to achive our dreams but we have to find the easy one of them

Normally, their desires are changing while they are growing along It is because people in different ages have

different requirements and thoughts.

but we have to never give up and always search the clue to the right way.

   My dream now is to finish the school semesters and graduate from the collage  and be independent person and work in the computers domain fainally I want to  marry a beautiful girl and build a happy family with sucsess and happyniess .