{"id":32669,"date":"2013-08-02T04:31:47","date_gmt":"2013-08-02T04:31:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=32669"},"modified":"2013-08-02T04:31:47","modified_gmt":"2013-08-02T04:31:47","slug":"langston-hughes-showed-me-what-it-meant-to-be-a-black-writer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=32669","title":{"rendered":"Langston Hughes showed me what it meant to be a black writer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Langston Hughes showed me what it meant to be a black writer<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/a>
\n2013-07-31<\/p>\n

Gary Younge<\/a><\/strong>, Feature Writer and Columnist<\/p>\n

His 1926 essay,<\/em> The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain<\/a> made clear that a black writer must write the best work they can, while refusing to be defined by other people’s racial agendas<\/em><\/p>\n

One of my first columns on these pages didn’t make it into the paper. I’d written about the NATO bombing of Bosnia and the comment editor at the time thought I should stick to subjects closer to home. “We have people who can write about Bosnia,” he said. “Can you add an ethnic sensibility to this.”<\/p>\n

The whole point of having a black columnist, he thought, was to write about black issues. I had other ideas.<\/strong> I had no problem writing about race. It’s an important subject that deserves scrutiny to which I’ve given considerable thought and about which I’ve done a considerable amount of research. I have no problem being regarded as a black writer. It’s an adjective not an epithet. In the words of Toni Morrison, when asked if she found it limiting to be described as a black woman writer: “I’m already discredited. I’m already politicised, before I get out of the gate. I can accept the labels because being a black woman writer is not a shallow place but a rich place to write from. It doesn’t limit my imagination, it expands it.”…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Langston Hughes showed me what it meant to be a black writer The Guardian 2013-07-31 Gary Younge, Feature Writer and Columnist His 1926 essay, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain made clear that a black writer must write the best work they can, while refusing to be defined by other people’s racial agendas One […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,8],"tags":[3155,488,2103],"class_list":["post-32669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-media-archive","tag-gary-younge","tag-langston-hughes","tag-the-guardian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32669\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}