Gender and race in Langston Hughes’ poetry of the Spanish Civil War

ABSTRACT

African American poet Langston Hughes worked as a press correspondent during the Spanish civil war. This experience left an imprint in his production and particularly in his poetry, giving light to significant advances in his entwinement of race, gender, and identity. The acclaimed diversity of Hughes’ feminine models, and his inclusive stance find difficult accommodation in the poetic corpus about Spain. Using a critical appraisal of race, class and gender divisions, the poetic representation of female characters is discussed attending to their different forms of inclusion and exclusion. Their relationship with later developments in Hughes’ poetic construction of African American female agency is assessed, and the singularity of certain characters in the Spanish corpus is explored. Finally, conclusions are drawn to demonstrate the relevant and understudied contributions of this corpus for the better understanding of Hughes’ feminine universe as a whole.

KEYWORDS:

• Race
• gender
• Langston Hughes
• poetry
• Spanish Civil War

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. During his stay in Spain, Langston Hughes established close ties with the Alliance of Antifascist Intellectuals for the Defence of Culture. Hughes, among others, embarked on the translation of Bodas de Sangre by Federico García Lorca, helped by Manuel Altolaguirre and Rafael Alberti. He also translated 15 of the 18 ballads of Romancero Gitano, which were later revised by Lorca’s brother, Francisco, and published in the first number of the journal Beloit Poetry Journal in 1951.

2. As stated by Jones (2002), Hurston, Fauset and West, employed the narrative strategies of the bildungsroman to approach the growth and perception of the black feminine universe, a procedure which allowed them to focus on the maturity and recognition of their identity and role in the world (Abrams, 2019).

3. Several studies affirm that through the use of the lyric ‘I’ persona, these women poets were able to express a certain degree of female identity and paved the road to contemporary African American women writers. For a more elaborated discussion on the topic, see McKay (2006) and Hull (1987).

4. The entwinement of the concepts of race and gender in Hughes has become a paradigm of various contemporary female intellectual currents of thought that analyse the effect of these two concepts on the self-conception of women. Audre Lorde or bell hooks represent some examples of this group of feminist intellectuals.

5. This circumstance is all the more difficult if the degree of authorship or recreation has to be discerned in the compilation of Langston Hughes: ‘Spanish Folk Songs of the War’.

6. The problematic relationship between the poet and his mother is evident in the letters that they both exchanged (McLaren, 1997). The compilation My Dear Boy: Carrie Hughes’s Letters to Langston Hughes, 1926–1938 suggests that the lack of kindness from the maternal figure might have had an impact in the life and work of the poet.

7. Emory University, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Atlanta, GA.

8. The date of publication of this poem has sparked controversy among scholars. According to Arnold Rampersad, it was published in Fight for Democracy in 1938, but Faith Berry affirmed that it had remained unpublished until its publication in Good Morning Revolution (1973).

9. As Donlon and Scaramella (2019) point out, the poet visited Fuentes de Ebro in October 1937 to compile information on the death of the soldier Milton Herndon. The work of Hughes was gathered together in the article ‘Milt Herndon Died Trying to Rescue Wounded Pal’, published 1 January 1938 in the Baltimore Afro-American (2002, pp. 181–85).

10. This desire to translate the Spanish culture for the African American readership is evident in his journalism, which is awash with scenes and experiences that underline the social nature of the Spanish people. The cafés and the street life held his attention in a powerful way. He even attended plays at the height of the defence of Madrid, thanks to María Teresa León, who together with her husband Rafael Alberti, were directors of the Alliance of Antifascist Intellectuals, where Hughes found accommodation during his stay in Madrid. Especially in his first four articles published for the Baltimore Afro-American and in the last chapters of this second autobiography, Hughes described popular scenes of celebration amidst the conflict.

11. Both practices were common at the time. See Labajo (2004).

12. This poem is either the result of a personal translation or an interpretation of the popular Spanish militia songbook and would later be published in Volunteer for Liberty on 15 June 1938 and in the Daily Worker on 16 July of that same year.

13. Donlon (Hughes et al., 2012) indicates that his poem appears in Nancy Cunard’s papers under the title ‘Johnny Writes Home from Spain’ together with other three ones. According to this author, this poem is, apparently, the only one pending publication.

14. Johnny represents the generic narrative voice that Hughes used to address the African American population, a character that was in fact a volunteer black soldier from the Lincoln Battalion. The poet would use this same resource in the poem ‘Letter from Spain’ (1938), addressed to a ‘Dear Brother at home’, as well as in ‘Postcard from Spain’ (1938) and ‘Love Letter from Spain’ (1937).

15. The acronym in English, C.I.O. refers to the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Launched in the 1930s, this Congress defended the association of workers by unions, regardless of their race or their professional qualification and, for the first time in history, made possible the union of black workers.

16. Hughes’ genuine interest in the Roma ethnic group has been largely explored by Moreno (2006) and Soto (2020). The black African presence in flamenco had already been acknowledged by W. E. B. Du Bois in his seminal work The Souls of Black Folk (Du Bois, 1990). Decades later, Du Bois’ thesis were to be corroborated by the live show that Hughes enjoyed in Madrid, which undoubtedly echoed African traits that resonated in the poet’s soul. In fact, Goldberg (2014) has traced black African presences in flamenco to conclude that ‘although this figure became a national symbol, the Gypsy is neither Christian nor Muslim, neither black nor white, neither tragic nor comic’ (p. 108).

17. Undoubtedly, Langston Hughes conflated Gypsy, Andalusian, and Spanish identities as mutually interchangeable identities, an exotic but reductionist view of Spanishness common to the popular imagination as several studies have attested (Colmeiro, 2002; Simpson, 2007).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alba Fernández-Alonso

Alba Fernández-Alonso is a PhD candidate at the University of Burgos, where she is also a part-time Assistant Teacher. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Translation Studies (University of Valladolid, Spain), and has been working as a freelance sworn translator and interpreter of English and Spanish since 2011. She also has a Master’s degree in Medical Translation (University Jaume I, Spain) and a Master’s degree in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (University of Burgos, Spain). Alba’s research interests focus on the works of the African American poet Langston Hughes, more particularly on the pedagogical effect and literary empathy of Hughes’ literary repertoire about the Spanish Civil War. She is an active member of the research group ‘Identities and Changes in Anglophone Cultures and Literatures’ at the University of Burgos and a partner of the Erasmus+ Project ‘A VIRtual Solution for a comprehensive and coordinated training for foreign language TEACHers in Europe’ (2018-2021).

Dr. María Amor Barros-del Río lectures in English language, culture and literature at the University of Burgos, Spain. Her research interests include gender studies and contemporary fiction in English with a special interest in Irish fiction, and she has published extensively in these fields of specialization. She is the leader of the research group ‘Identities and Changes in Anglophone Cultures and Literatures’ at the University of Burgos, and she currently participates in the COST Action ‘Women on the Move’ (2020-2024). Other fields of interest include critical pedagogy and second language teaching for which she was funded the Erasmus+ Project ‘VIRTEACH: A VIRtual Solution for a comprehensive and coordinated training for foreign language TEACHers in Europe’ (2018-2021).