Harlem (poem)

"Harlem" (also known as "A Dream Deferred")[2] is a poem by Langston Hughes. These eleven lines ask, "What happens to a dream deferred?", providing reference to the African-American experience. It was published as part of a longer volume-length poem suite in 1951 called Montage of a Dream Deferred, but is often excerpted from the larger work. The play A Raisin in the Sun was titled after a line in the poem.

Harlem
by Langston Hughes
First published inMontage of a Dream Deferred
Publication date1951
Lines11
Harlem

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?[1]

Background

Langston Hughes was an American poet. Hughes was a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance and wrote poetry that focused on the Black experience in America.[3] The poem was published in Hughes's book Montage of a Dream Deferred in 1951.[4] The book includes over ninety poems[5] that are divided into five sections. "Harlem" occurs in the fifth section, which is titled "Lenox Avenue Mural".[6] The poems in the book were intended to be read as one long poem, but "Harlem" is often read by itself.[5]

Content

The first line of "Harlem" asks "What happens to a dream deferred?" and the following ten lines work to answer the question. Hughes first asks four questions (such as "Does it dry up/like a raisin in the sun?"), presents a conjecture ("Maybe it just sags/like a heavy load.") and ends with a final question ("Or does it explode?").[5]

Reception and analysis

Hughes's poems "Harlem", "Mother to Son", and "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" were described in the Encyclopedia of African-American Writing as "anthems of black America".[7] Scott Challener, professor of English and American Studies,[8] deemed the poem "one of the most influential poems of the 20th century."[5]

"Harlem" is referenced in El sueño, a short story by Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo.[9]

"A dream deferred"

The poem's central question has been described as "one of American poetry’s most famous questions".[5] Scott Challener considers Hughes's questions to be "urgent, embodied questions" that presents imagery of neglect while "provoking the senses". He notes that "Dreams here are not these overexposed things per se but are imagined to be like them and subject to the same forces—they are both visceral and vulnerable, and altogether too much. Dreams, like history, hurt. By implication, they demand care—and all the work that care entails." Challener feels that the final line "Or does it explode?" is abrupt and dramatic, which could be emblematic of race riots such as the Harlem riot of 1935 and Harlem riot of 1943, but might also refer to movements of population like the Great Migration and breaking down of misconceptions.[5] The scholar N. Michelle Murray notes that the dream itself is never named.[9]

Hughes uses the "dream deferred" motif in several of his works, such as "Boogie 1AM" and "Good Morning."[10]

Legacy

The play A Raisin in the Sun was titled after the third line in Hughes's poem.[11]

References
  1. "Langston Hughes: "Harlem"". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 16 February 2021.
  2. Hartman, Michelle (June 2016). "Dreams Deferred, Translated: Radwa Ashour and Langston Hughes". CLINA. 2: 61–76.
  3. "Langston Hughes". Poetry Foundation. 2021-02-09. Retrieved 2021-02-10.
  4. Andrews, William L.; Foster, Frances Smith; Harris, Trudier, eds. (2001-01-01). "Montage of a Dream Deferred". The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature (1 ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acref/9780195138832.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-513883-2.
  5. Challener, Scott (2021-02-09). "Langston Hughes: "Harlem" by Scott Challener". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 2021-02-10.
  6. Lenz, Günter H. (2003). ""The Riffs, Runs, Breaks, and Distortions of the Music of a Community in Transition": Redefining African American Modernism and the Jazz Aesthetic in Langston Hughes' Montage of a Dream Deferred and Ask Your Mama". The Massachusetts Review. 44 (1/2): 269–282. ISSN 0025-4878. JSTOR 25091940.
  7. Hughes, (James Mercer) Langston 2/1/1902--5/22/1967. (2018). In S. D. Hatch (Ed.), Encyclopedia of African-American writing: five centuries of contribution : trials & triumphs of writers, poets, publications and organizations (3rd ed.). Grey House Publishing.
  8. "Scott Challener". William & Mary University. Retrieved 2021-03-02.
  9. Murray, N. Michelle (2018-01-02). "The African Dreams of Migration: Donato Ndongo's "El sueño," Langston Hughes, and the Poetics of the Black Diaspora". Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures. 72 (1): 39–52. doi:10.1080/00397709.2018.1421838. ISSN 0039-7709. S2CID 186623095.
  10. The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, ed. Arnold Rampersad. New York: Random House 1994
  11. Jackson, Kenneth T.; Dunbar, David S. (2002). Empire City: New York Through the Centuries. Columbia University Press. p. 712. ISBN 978-0-231-10909-3.
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