W. Jason Miller's Books

Langston Hughes

By: W. Jason Miller

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As the first black author in America to make his living exclusively by writing, Langston Hughes inspired a generation of writers and activists. One of the pioneers of jazz poetry, Hughes led the Harlem Renaissance, while Martin Luther King, Jr., invoked Hughes’s signature metaphor of dreaming in his speeches. In this new biography, W. Jason Miller illuminates Hughes’s status as an international literary figure through a compelling look at the relationship between his extraordinary life and his canonical works. Drawing on unpublished letters and manuscripts, Miller addresses Hughes’s often ignored contributions to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, as well as his complex and well-guarded sexuality, and repositions him as a writer rather than merely the most beloved African American poet of the twentieth century.

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Page Count

224

Publisher

Reaktion Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1789142555

ISBN 13

9781789142556

Origins of the Dream

Hughes's Poetry and King's Rhetoric

By: W. Jason Miller

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Origins of the Dream

Hughes's Poetry and King's Rhetoric

By: W. Jason Miller

Since Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, some scholars have privately suspected that King’s “dream” was connected to Langston Hughes’s poetry. Drawing on archival materials, including notes, correspondence, and marginalia, W. Jason Miller provides a completely original and compelling argument that Hughes’s influence on King’s rhetoric was, in fact, evident in more than just the one famous speech. King’s staff had been wiretapped by J. Edgar Hoover and suffered accusations of communist influence, so quoting or naming the leader of the Harlem Renaissance—who had his own reputation as a communist—would only have intensified the threats against the civil rights activist. Thus, the link was purposefully veiled through careful allusions in King’s orations. In Origins of the Dream, Miller lifts that veil and shows how Hughes’s revolutionary poetry became a measurable inflection in King’s voice. He contends that by employing Hughes’s metaphors in his speeches, King negotiated a political climate that sought to silence the poet’s subversive voice. By separating Hughes’s identity from his poems, King helped the nation unconsciously embrace the incendiary ideas behind his poetry.

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Page Count

261

Publisher

University Press of Florida

Published Date

ISBN 10

0813055180

ISBN 13

9780813055183

Langston Hughes and American Lynching Culture

By: W. Jason Miller

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Langston Hughes and American Lynching Culture

By: W. Jason Miller

Langston Hughes never knew of an America where lynching was absent from the cultural landscape. Jason Miller investigates the nearly three dozen poems written by Hughes on the subject of lynching to explore its varying effects on survivors, victims, and accomplices as they resisted, accepted, and executed this brutal form of sadistic torture. Starting from Hughes's life as a teenager during the Red Summer of 1919 and moving through the civil rights movement that took place toward the end of Hughes's life, Miller initiates an important dialogue between America's neglected history of lynching and some of the world’s most significant poems. This extended study of the centrality of these heinous acts to Hughes's artistic development, aesthetics, and activism represents a significant and long-overdue contribution to our understanding of the art and politics of Langston Hughes.

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Page Count

185

Publisher

University Press of Florida

Published Date

ISBN 10

0813043247

ISBN 13

9780813043241

Book's by W. Jason Miller

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes

Origins of the Dream

Origins of the Dream

Langston Hughes and American Lynching Culture

Langston Hughes and American Lynching Culture

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