ASIN : B0C1PTL5DY
Hughes' essay addressed the issues of the Harlem Renaissance as it celebrated African American creative innovations such as blues, spirituals, jazz, and literary work that engaged African American life. Hughes understood a fellow African American poet's stated desire to be "a poet—not a Negro poet" as that poet's wish to look away from his African American heritage and instead absorb white culture. This urge within the race towards whiteness, the desire to pour racial distinctiveness into the mould of American standardisation, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible, Hughes observes, "is the mountain standing in the path of any authentic Black art in America."
