Racial Prejudice By Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou And...

Throughout the 20th Century racial divides in American society have always been apparent. Despite the abolition of slavery, black Americans have still been treated unethically. Writers such as Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou and Kathryn Stockett have used their writing to express the unfairness of racial inequality. Langston Hughes uses his poetry to express his personal struggle relating to racial prejudice which he encountered through his life particularly in the 1920’s when he was a student at Columbia University but was forced to leave due to racial abuse. Similarly, Angelou uses literature to express her feelings about racism and slavery when she began writing her first novel in the late 60’s, a time when the civil rights movement really gathered momentum, as we see in the novel The Help, written by Kathryn Stockett, a white women living in Jackson Mississippi. Consequently the latter half of the 20th Century resulted in positive changes being made by literature, whi ch addressed the unfairness of racism in society. Because of the unfairness each writer deals with, the quest for a better life is a central theme for each writer. The unjust and horrific ordeal that Hughes encountered when he was forced out of university prompted him to start writing poetry. The concept of dreaming of a better life reoccurs frequently in his poem Dreams: Hughes is using the metaphor of the broken winged bird to symbolise his feelings towards his life at that time. The message contained