It’s Black History Month, a time to learn and reflect on the history of African-Americans or Black people in the United States. I usually give book suggestions for Black History Month. (See last year’s post at https://www.lynnlovegreen.com/post/more-black-authors-to-read.) To mix it up this year, I’m going to share a poem that’s been on my mind lately.
Poet Langston Hughes was part of the Harlem Renaissance. He wrote poems about America and the experience of African-Americans from the twenties through the sixties. (Learn more about him on the poets.org site at https://poets.org/search?combine=Langston+Hughes.)
My favorite poem is one of his, “Mother to Son.” I found it today on the Poetry Foundation website, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47559/mother-to-son
Mother to Son
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.
Copyright Credit: Langston Hughes, "Mother to Son" from The Collected Works of Langston Hughes. Copyright © 2002 by Langston Hughes. Reprinted by permission of Harold Ober Associates, Inc.
Source: The Collected Works of Langston Hughes (University of Missouri Press (BkMk Press), 2002)
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