Great African American Literary Voices

Langston Hughes · Arna Bontemps · Countee Cullen · Gwendolyn Brooks · Sonia Sanchez

Nov 2023 · Listen & Live Audio · Narrated by Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps, Countee Cullen, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Sonia Sanchez

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10 min

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About this audiobook

Hear rare recordings from five of the most-respected African American poets reading their own works: Langston Hughes, The Negro Speaks of Rivers; Arna Bontemps, Nocturne at Bethesda; Countee Cullen, Heritage; Gwendolyn Brooks, The Vacant Lot; and Sonia Sanchez, Black Magic. .

About the author

Langston Hughes, February 1, 1902 - May 22, 1967 Langston Hughes, one of the foremost black writers to emerge from the Harlem Renaissance, was born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Mo. Hughes briefly attended Columbia University before working numerous jobs including busboy, cook, and steward. While working as a busboy, he showed his poems to American poet Vachel Lindsay, who helped launch his career. He soon obtained a scholarship to Lincoln University and had several works published. Hughes is noted for his depictions of the black experience. In addition to the black dialect, he incorporated the rhythms of jazz and the blues into his poetry. While many recognized his talent, many blacks disapproved of his unflattering portrayal of black life. His numerous published volumes include, "The Weary Blues," "Fine Clothes to the Jew," and "Montage of a Dream Deferred." Hughes earned several awards during his lifetime including: a Guggenheim fellowship, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Grant, and a Spingarn Medal from the NAACP. Langston Hughes died of heart failure on May 22, 1967. Born in New York City, Countee Cullen was separated from his mother in early childhood. He was raised in part by the Reverend Frederick Cullen, a Methodist minister. In high school, Cullen was already praised for his poetry. The poem "Life's Rendezvous" was published in a high school literary magazine and won first prize in a citywide contest. Educated at New York University and Harvard University, Cullen worked as an assistant editor on the Urban League's Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, writing a monthly literary column. His many awards for poetry included the first Harmon Prize for distinguished achievement in literature by a black writer, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He taught junior high school in New York City until his death. Gwendolyn Brooks was born on June 17, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas. She graduated from Wilson Junior College in Chicago in 1936 and received her L.H.D. (Doctor of Humane Letters) from Columbia College in 1964. She was the author of more than twenty books of poetry, including Children Coming Home, Blacks, To Disembark, The Near-Johannesburg Boy and Other Poems, Riot, In the Mecca, The Bean Eaters, and A Street in Bronzeville. In 1950, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for Annie Allen. She wrote numerous other books including a novel, Maud Martha, Report from Part One: An Autobiography, a book of poetry for children Bronzeville Boys and Girls, and several children's fiction books. She was named Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968. She also received an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, the Frost Medal, a National Endowment for the Arts award, the Shelley Memorial Award, and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Guggenheim Foundation. She died on December 3, 2000. Born in Alabama, educated in New York City, Sanchez is a leading poet of the Black Arts Movement, whose poetry is written from political, economic, and social concerns as well as literary ones. Although her literary focus has been primarily to express her experience as an African American woman, Sanchez claims, "if you write from a black experience, you're writing from a universal experience as well." Sanchez's poems are direct, colloquial, and often militant. Many of her works are for children, such as her "poems for young brothas and sistuhs," as she puts it in It's a New Day (1971). Yet she also writes with tenderness about love. As academic interest in the voices of women and African Americans has intensified, critical interest in and acceptance of Sanchez's work has increased.

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