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Mother to Son

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"Mother to Son" is a 1922 poem written by Langston Hughes

Background

"Mother to Son" was first published in 1922 in The Crisis.[1] The poem was published in 1926 in The Weary Blues.[2]

Text

Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

Reception and analysis

The poem was described in the Encyclopedia of African-American Writing as an anthem of black America.[3]

The mother who is delivering the poem to her young son has been described as an "allegorical persona".[4] The professor R. Baxter Miller considers "Mother to Son" to illustrate "how dialect can be used with dignity."[2]

Structure

The poem utilizes strong elements of parallelism throughout. It is written in a accentual-syllabic verse, with two lines of Iambic pentameter (line 2: "Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair." and line 6: "And places with no carpet on the floor—"). In the first six lines, the words "stair" and "floor" are slant rhymes, meaning that they have similar sounds but are not 'perfect' rhymes. The following line, line seven ("Bare"), is a perfect rhyme with "stair" and the only line in the whole poem that is monosyllabic. One critic notes that "it seems as though the mother’s spartan accommodation, hardscrabble life, and unadorned language all converge on the word bare."[4]

The scholar Michael Skansgaard divides "Mother to Son" into five "units". The first two lines introduce the poem. The speaker then goes on to describe how her life has not been a "crystal stair", and the struggles she has faced. A new section begins after "Bare", where she starts describing climbing of the stair ("But all the time/I'se been a-climbin' on"). She goes on to urge her son to not "turn back", but breaks the pattern established in the two previous sections by only repeating the concept three times, instead of four. Finally the poem ends where it started, describing the climbing of the stair case.[4]

References

Martin Luther King Jr., an American civil rights activist and leader, referenced "Mother to Son" at least thirteen times in his public appearances, including during his "I Have a Dream" speech. These references largely took the form of wording referring to pressing forward and not turning back. W. Jason Miller describes these references as "overt" and argues that Barack Obama "inadvertently" alluded to the poem in his speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.[5]

References

  1. ^ Hughes, Langston (2020-12-31). The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. p. 621. ISBN 978-0-307-94938-7.
  2. ^ a b Miller, R. Baxter (1987). "Langston Hughes". In M. Davis, Thadious; Harris-Lopez, Trudier (eds.). Afro-American Writers From the Harlem Renaissance to 1940. Gale.
  3. ^ Hughes, (James Mercer) Langston 2/1/1902--5/22/1967. (2018). In S. D. Hatch (Ed.), Encyclopedia of African-American writing: five centuries of contribution : trials & triumphs of writers, poets, publications and organizations (3rd ed.). Grey House Publishing.
  4. ^ a b c Skansgaard, Michael (2020-03-01). "The Virtuosity of Langston Hughes: Persona, Rhetoric, and Iconography in The Weary Blues". Modern Language Quarterly. 81 (1): 65–94. doi:10.1215/00267929-7933089. ISSN 0026-7929.
  5. ^ Miller, W. Jason (2013). ""Don't Turn Back": Langston Hughes, Barack Obama, and Martin Luther King, Jr". African American Review. 46 (2/3): 425–438. ISSN 1062-4783.