Uncloseting the Harlem Renaissance: A Look at the Movement Through a Queer Lens

City University of New York (CUNY) City University of New York (CUNY)

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Dissertations and Theses City College of New York

2016

Uncloseting the Harlem Renaissance: A Look at the Movement Uncloseting the Harlem Renaissance: A Look at the Movement

Through a Queer Lens Through a Queer Lens

Mionnay McKee

CUNY City College

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Mionnay McKee ([email protected])

Advisor: Professor Václav Paris

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts of the City

College of the City University of New York

December 6, 2016

Uncloseting the Harlem Renaissance: A Look at the Movement Through a Queer Lens

Table of Contents

I. Introduction………………………………………………………....................Page 3

II. Richard Bruce Nugent and the Literature of Uncoded Homosexuality….…..Page 14

III. Langston Hughes and the Tradition of Coded Language...…….…………….Page 24

IV. Final Thoughts……………………………….……………………………….Page 45

I. Introduction

The Harlem Renaissance was an influential and important literary movement that occurred

in the early twentieth century and centered around the culture and people living in and around

Harlem, New York. The exact parameters of when it ended are debated; it is generally considered

to have lasted at least through the mid-1930s; however, some critics put the end dates as late as

the 1950s. The primary stages of the movement are generally agreed to have begun in the late

1910s. Harlem became a migration destination for black workers from the South, as well as for

educated blacks who made Harlem their cultural epicenter. The area had been home to white

European immigrants, but with the burgeoning black middle class moving into Harlem at the turn

of the 20th century, the area experienced a drastic change in demographics. The influx of blacks

created an air of racism in Harlem, oftentimes violent, which led to white Europeans to flee the

area, in episodes of so-called “white flight.”

This migration from the South to the North by blacks represented a widespread change in

the United States after the abolition of slavery. Named the Great Migration, mass communities of

blacks traveled North for more opportunities. World War I created plentiful industrial

opportunities, which were attractive enough for black rural Southern communities to move to

urban Northern areas. It is this industrialization, and the First World War specifically, that had a

direct influence on the Harlem Renaissance’s inception, as it was these ambitious black urban areas

that sprouted a large concentration of people who supported each other during a time of cultural

creativity. In the 1930s the movement started to decline, largely due to the effects of the Great

Depression.

It is during this high period during and after World War I that mainstream black culture

began to thrive in Harlem, and the nascent stages of the Harlem Renaissance began. 1917 saw the

premiere of Three Plays for a Negro Theatre. These plays were written by Ridgely Torrence, a

white playwright, and featured black actors. The work was significant in that black characters were

depicted as fully fledged people, with wide ranging feelings and complex emotions, and rejected

blackface and the minstrel stereotypes that were popular of the day. James Weldon Johnson

referred to the production of these plays as “the single most important event in the entire history

of the Negro in the American theater” (Gates 931). Another landmark of the movement’s inception

is Claude Mackay, after having written seminal poems on the black diaspora and black urban

experiences in 1917, published his 1919 sonnet, “If We Must Die.” This poem introduced a

political perspective on the black urban experience on the cultural stage that had not previously

been addressed. “If We Must Die” never specifically addresses race by name, but its tone of

defiance was taken by readers to be a response to the violent riots and lynchings taking place

nationwide. At the Harlem Renaissance’s first dawn, Johnson and Mackay were two of first

pioneers depicting contemporary black urban life in America.

Not everyone embraced the idea of a “Renaissance” emerging from black culture. Hubert

Harrison, the so-called “Father of Harlem Radicalism” argued that the “Negro Literary

Renaissance” disregarded “the stream of literary and artistic products which had flowed

uninterruptedly from Negro writers from 1850 to the present.” Harrison also stated that referring

to it as a “Renaissance” was mostly a white invention. His argument was that it is in fact,

condescending, to refer to this movement as a “Renaissance,” because saying so undermines the

quality of art produced prior, the implication being that slave and abolitionist art is somehow

primitive (and therefore inferior) compared to the art of their so-called enlightened contemporary

age, which he believes it was not.

There was no singular unifying theme of the art of the Harlem Renaissance. Some of the

movement’s major themes were depicting modern black life in the North, the aftereffects on

slavery on black life, institutional racism, and progressive politics. One of the overarching themes

of these elements was an unconcealed display of racial pride, a theme that will share its ideas with

the New Negro, described in more detail in a later chapter. While the movement was predominately

black, it was not completely black. Obviously, it relied heavily on its black clientele, black

publications and black-owned businesses; however, it also depended heavily on white patronage

for support. Carl van Vechten was one such white patron, and he provided support through both

patronage and publication to the Harlem Renaissance’s premier artists. The motivations of these

white patrons varied. Some who were involved with the movement sincerely wanted to help to

unify races and were genuinely concerned with defying racist attitudes. Others saw the movement

as just another extension of “primitive” culture and thought it nothing more than an amusement

and a fad of the time, not taking its message seriously.

In the end, the Harlem Renaissance was more than just an artistic movement. It was

successful in that it brought the black experience to the forefront of American thought. Its

proliferation of progressive politics and manifestation of a new racial consciousness made a

massive impact on black society, and society in general. It redefined how the United States viewed

its black population, and how the world also viewed them. The migration of Southern blacks to

the North changed the landscape of American history. It altered the image of blacks as rural and

undereducated and instead represented them as members of an urbanite cosmopolitan class. This

progression heavily influenced the black communities around the country and shaped their future

motivations by means of greater self-awareness, social progress, and determination. It is easy to

see how the Harlem Renaissance influenced later generations of black cultural, socio-economic,

and political movements, namely the post-World War II civil rights movement and the Black Pride

movement of the 1970s.

From this brief history, it is evident that the Harlem Renaissance’s racial history is clearly

defined. What isn’t clearly defined, however, is the movement’s queer history. In “Insolent Racing,

Rough Narrative: The Harlem Renaissance's Impolite Queers,” Michael L. Cobb makes assertions

as to how “explorations about queer sexuality and African-American literary production suffer

from an inability to queer, substantially, the cultural expressions of race, especially once race

becomes the organizing rubric under which a culture articulates a literary tradition” (328). This is

saying the sexual undercurrent, in particular of works of black artists, is all but hidden when that

sexual undercurrent is anything other than heterosexual in nature. The Harlem Renaissance, which

was and is looked upon as the apex of black cultural enlightenment, struggled both then and now

to identify the queerness that was the driving force for much of its success.

One of the bigger mistakes regarding the reading and analyzing the work of the Harlem

Renaissance is to interpret it solely from the lens of a racial narrative. Cobb quotes from Henry

Louis Gates, Jr., in reviewing the film Looking for Langston, that the Harlem Renaissance was

“surely as gay as it was black, not that it was exclusively either of these” (329). So it has to be

asked why this cultural movement attaches itself to its racial aspect, but less so to its queer one,

when both were crucial to its inception and success. While the racial influence was obviously a

stronger connector of the pioneers of the time, as it's safe to say that most (but not all) of the

revolutionaries of the movement were black, perhaps not as overwhelming a majority were queer;

however, the queer population was significant enough that it should be at least acknowledged and

its references embraced. Cobb further quotes, “yet, this, in view of its emblematic importance to

later movements of black creativity in this country, is what makes the powerful current of

homophobia in black letters a matter of particular interest and concern” (233). This homophobia

in the black artistic community (and, to a greater extent, the black community in general) is a

pointed, yet loaded, observation, one that is unfortunately deep-seated, and still persists even

today, although less so, the examples of which you see demonstrated in the black arts of today,

with hip-hop music being the most obvious example due to its explicit lyrics. Cobb summarizes

this attempted downplaying of influence of queerness on the black artistic community of the time,

saying “[i]ndeed, minimized discussion of the black queer's exclusion from the emergent African-

American literary canon not only points to a lack in what counts as 'appropriate' themes for race

criticism, but such a stubborn exclusion also points to the plentitude of homophobia in critical

black letters” (329). What is being stated here is clear: the black artistic tradition interprets

homosexuality as improper at best and evil at worst, deeming its influence on artistic expression

all but irrelevant.

Cobb singles out Richard Bruce Nugent in his condemnation of queer exclusion from the

black literary canon. Nugent was one of the few openly gay writers of the Harlem Renaissance, a

quality which made him all but a posthumous pariah when reflecting on the movement. Cobb

writes:

Poignantly, the critical and literary neglect of one of the most explicitly queer writers

of the Harlem Renaissance, Richard Bruce Nugent, echoes Gates' concern that there

is a repetitive desire not to risk mixing the African-American literary tradition with

a sustained and systematic discussion of same-sex sexuality. Nugent's virtual absence

from the black literary and cultural scene seems significant because he is often

credited with being the first African American to write and publish a story with

explicit homosexual content. Whether this is true or not, his early crossing into the

taboo territory of same-sex sexuality has cast him into the role of race traitor, and, as

a consequence, he provides a fruitful place to begin asking more detailed questions

about race and queerness in the Harlem Renaissance's literature. Significantly,

Nugent becomes a re-occurring and rich icon of the queer in Harlem, and his

penchant for insolence, as we shall see, is certainly an issue. (329)

This neglect of Nugent's literary contribution to the Harlem Renaissance is very telling, as

is mentioned above, it plays into the homophobia that still exists in black contemporary culture.

The mere fact he is credited as being the first black person to have written and published a story

with candid homosexual content is alone worth mentioning in the cultural overview and impact of

the Harlem Renaissance. To have his contributions to the movement simply swept under the rug

is a testament of a bigger problem in the black community's dealing of issues they view as illicit.

It is also interesting that Cobb uses the term “race traitor” to describe Nugent's treatment in his

place in the literature of the Harlem Renaissance. A general definition of “race traitor” would be a

person who is perceived to hold opinions that are against the best interests of his or her race. Cobb

is stating that by Nugent being open about his homosexuality and being overt in his stories of

homosexual desire, he is somehow held in the view of a traitor, by other artistic blacks, against

black ideals and black progression. Nugent must have been aware of this perception by others,

which is where his “penchant for insolence” comes into play; his insolence can be seen perhaps as

a defense mechanism for how he was treated by others, or alternatively as an act of defiance against

those who deemed him inferior or radical, or a combination of both. Because of his openness

regarding his homosexuality and his unfair treatment thereafter in his place in the literary canon

of black literature, he can be seen as a gay Harlem icon. Cobb writes:

Although Nugent's most queerly-explicit story, “Smoke, Lilies, and Jade, A Novel,

Part I,” is often-anthologized in smaller gay anthologies after having originally

appeared in the short-lived 1926 journal edited by Wallace Thurman, Langston

Hughes, Gwendolyn Bennet, Aaron Douglas, John Davis, Zora Neale Hurston, and

Nugent himself (publishing under the pseudonym Richard Bruce), the story often

remains absent in anthologies and work on the Harlem Renaissance. For instance,

even though the importance of the journal Fire!! A Quarterly Devoted to the Younger

Negro Artists is duly noted in the Norton Anthology of African American Literature,

Nugent's story escapes anthologized comment or reprint. This editorial choice

suggests that a literary object like Nugent's, important for its perceived

groundbreaking engagement with a previously taboo queer theme, is not a special

concern in the fraught, but nevertheless important, work of consolidating a canon of

African-American literature. And by no means are the Norton editors the only ones

who deemphasize Nugent's literary importance in black letters: Arnold Rampersad,

in his introduction to the newest edition of The New Negro, describes Nugent as “far

more concerned with his gay identity than with his sense of race or ethnicity” (xxi).

Moreover, the surprisingly small mass of archival research, scholarly work, and

sustained interest on Nugent also implies that racial excavations of this queer author

are not a priority. (329)

Here, Cobb mentions the blatant omission of Nugent's overtly queer story as reemphasizing

the point that a homosexual theme in black literature is seen as somehow a detriment to the black

cause, and black literature in general. Cobb calls Nugent's queer story a “groundbreaking

engagement with a previously taboo queer theme,” which implies that besides its achievement in

breaking barriers with regard to its homosexual content, it is actually a good, well-written story,

thereby worthy of inclusion in any anthology of the Harlem Renaissance or black literature in

general. The most provoking sentence in the above quote comes from Arnold Rampersad's

introduction to a revised edition of The New Negro. Referring to Nugent as “far more concerned

with his gay identity than with his sense of race or ethnicity” is a blatant attempt at undermining

Nugent’s literary endeavors. A statement such as this can make a modern reader wonder aloud at

what exactly Rampersad means. In our modern time, seeing Nugent's exclusion in literary

anthologies, to a contemporary audience, makes one think that Nugent isn't the one far more

concerned with his sexual identity than his racial one. It seems that those doing the excluding

seem far more concerned, as they are the ones who are bringing it up, by omitting his literary

contribution, and by noting the small scholarly research that has been done on his work, in

comparison to the others writers of the time.

So, if overtly homosexual content was so incendiary at the time, why was such a story

included by its editors in a black literary publication such as Fire!!? Quoting cultural historian Eric

Gerber, it is explained that “[Wallace] Thurman decided that in order for Fire!! to be truly daring,

two particularly sensational pieces were needed: one on homosexuality, the other on prostitution.

He [Thurman] flipped a coin to determine who [Thurman or Nugent] would write what.” Cobb

continues, “Nugent, as we know, wrote the homosexual piece that would help shock a different

kind of African-American literary recognition; he wrote the kind of piece that was intended to get

the journal 'banned in Boston' (Smith 214)” (330). So here, it is inferred with this statement that

“taboo” subjects, such as homosexuality and prostitution, were actively sought for the magazine

in order to attract attention (and notoriety), yet these subjects were not seen worthy of literary

value on their own accord. This makes Nugent's dismissal in literary accounts of the Harlem

Renaissance all the more poignant. Cobb quotes Alain Locke, in his review of Fire!!, calling the

group a “charging brigade of literary revolt,” and stating “the strong sex radicalism of many of the

contributors will shock many well-wishers and elate some of our adversaries” (331). When

reflecting on the accounts of the Harlem Renaissance, it seems that the adversaries won out in the

retelling of the movement. Locke, acting as an “advisor” to the editors of Fire!!, put a certain

strain on the creativity of the younger Harlem artists. He is referred to as one of the older icons

that needed to be torn down to make way for the emergence of the new movement, and as Cobb

states, “as a counterpart to Nugent's iconicity, Locke enters into […] the conservative forces

needing to be contradicted in order for queerness to be articulated” (330). But while Locke tried

to turn the magazine's pushing against conservative mores into a negative thing, the editors of the

magazine thought it positive, a necessary radicalization intended to push boundaries in the name

of creativity. Cobb states:

Locke's characterization of the journal's radicalism is completely in-line with the

editors' expressed desire: when one writes a piece on homosexuality, one will then

have a troubling aesthetic rupture, and one will then shock readers. The good

modernist catalogue of Joyce, Anderson and others gives way to the rushed imitation

of the traditionally-coded queer literary tradition of decadence, producing effete

echoes of something naughty, something that does not recall the more polite and

“clean” flesh values that Locke would prefer to have representing Harlem and his

New Negroes. (332)

The “New Negro: An Interpretation” was Alain Locke’s anthology of black fiction, poetry

and essays. He named this anthology after “The New Negro,” his term for the philosophy of the

flourishing cultural scene of the Harlem Renaissance as he perceived it. In essence, the philosophy

was grounded in “race-building,” and the idea that blacks no longer hold themselves to the

standards of whites, but create their own standard that is equally valid. This was to be accomplished

by political activism and self-reliance, and to be enforced as an ideal for other blacks through the

actions of its upholders as a positive example. Locke, who was gay himself, subscribed to a certain

homosexual code of conduct, that is, one does not speak about such things in public. In “Strange

Fruits,” Mason Stokes speaks about the other side of queer Harlem, the one of which Locke was a

member, stating, “alongside this flamboyance, there was another queer Harlem, one that cloaked

itself in the garments of middle-class respectability” (61). It was this side of Harlem that he hoped

his New Negroes would aspire to. This idea of “race-building” is also another reason why Locke

was so critical of Nugent, as he didn’t subscribe to the buttoned-up attributes of queer Harlem,

thus putting him squarely in the “race-traitor” camp in Locke’s view.

The above description of Locke’s critique of Fire!! lies at the heart of the movement's

motivation. The editors of Fire!! aimed for the “troubling aesthetic rupture,” in the hopes of

shocking their readers, yes, but perhaps also to encourage more innovative black creative thought.

By comparing themselves to James Joyce and Sherwood Anderson, part of the “good modernist

catalogue,” they hoped to achieve the same techniques in black literature, something that conjures

up something sinful and depraved, and therefore truthful, instead of the gentility and implied

insincerity that Locke was looking for to represent his culture. Cobb goes on to mention how it is

easy to feel disdain at the very society one is rebelling against, and that can be translated into

disrespectful behavior, but Cobb is also suggesting that this attitude can also be used as armor:

The tool of contempt is wielded by characters who become too individual, and, as a

consequence, are coded as bohemian, lazy, and, most dangerously, queer. Yet,

instead of allowing these codings – codings handed down by people too invested in

a polite and restrained articulation of race – to disable a radical rearticulation of race

and individual, the editors of the journal exploit the designations' toxic and damning

connotations. In other words, the artists use their young, Bohemian insolence, their

queer figural positions, to slap convention and usher in the possibility of new forms

of artistic and narrative expression. The artists take on the pathology evoked by a

contest between the collective and the individual, and yield the possibility of new

forms that enable queer and race to exist within the same literary articulation. […]

The young artists exploit the abjectness of queer form, the rudeness of a queer image

or symbol, to create a new form of black literary expression. (343)

Here, Cobb is treating contempt as a dangerous weapon, to be used against those who deem

individuality as threatening to the collective race. The younger black artists are embracing their

queer moniker, almost taunting the conservative collective to refer to them as such, so as to give

their radical movement power in the aim of unleashing a new mode of conduct. In the battle

between the old-school collective and new-school individual, the persona of disrespect of the old

guard is seen a badge of courage with which to pioneer a new school of thought.

In analyzing Nugent's “Smoke, Lilies and Jade,” Cobb makes the analogy that “being

straight means race fidelity; being queer means violating the collective by becoming too

individual” (346). This opinion is yet again parallel to the earlier description of Nugent as a “race

traitor,” that being heterosexual is somehow being in align with your race and queerness is a

rebellious act of individualism. Cobb concludes with a statement on why the Harlem Renaissance

is crucial in the scope of queer literature:

The Harlem Renaissance is important for a queer literary tradition not only because

it presents queer criticism with archival material and primary texts, but also because

it gives us a possible explanation for why so much of contemporary queer visibility

is reliant and thrives on death narratives and unconventional forms. […] Queers take

large risks when they wander outside of the club, Harlem, or the restrained, closeted

spaces of their own particular counterpublic spaces of same-sex intimacy. In order

to become public, to offer a specifically queer reference, one must break with the

established form, and offer something that might seem toxic to the very self one

chooses to express in such publicity. (347)

Here, Cobb states that the use of unconventional forms in literature and queer visibility as

we know it today is unequivocally due, in part, to the Harlem Renaissance. This visibility,

however, often takes the tone of “death narratives,” the reasoning of which will be explored in

greater detail later. Queers, Cobb states, live on the perpetual outskirts of their everyday lives, and

that forces them to take risks that a heterosexual person might not even consider. To be seen for

who you really are, as a queer person, sometimes requires a deliberate act of defiance. To do this,

you may need to be brash and be seen as insolent in the process. Cobb argues that Richard Bruce

Nugent achieved this, to the detriment of his own literary legacy, but to the cultural advantage of

queer visibility in literature.

II. Richard Bruce Nugent and the Literature of Uncoded Homosexuality

This section more closely focuses our look at Richard Bruce Nugent. In the foreword to

Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance: Selections from the Work of Richard Bruce Nugent, Henry

Louis Gates Jr. states that “Bruce Nugent linked the black world of the Harlem Renaissance with

the gay world of bohemian New York. As Thomas Wirth points out, Nugent was 'the first African

American to write from a self-declared homosexual perspective.' Moreover, he was the first writer

who directly raised the issue of what being black and gay might have to do with each other, three

full decades before James Baldwin's novel Giovanni's Room appeared in 1956” (xii). So it only

makes sense that we begin with Nugent, in an effort to connect the two facets of the Harlem

Renaissance, that are often read as separate strains of the same movement. In reality they were not,

and the only way to fully understand the movement is by a simultaneous interweaving of the racial

and sexual themes throughout the works of the time. An attempt will be made to do that with a

close reading of Nugent's work.

In Gay Rebel, Wirth writes:

Nugent was the first African-American to write from a self-declared homosexual

perspective; his work therefore occupies an honored place in the now-burgeoning

literature of the gay black male. An openly gay black youth who moved in circles –

white and black – where same-sex erotic interest was pervasive but rarely

acknowledged publicly, Nugent illuminated, through his life and work, conundrums

of race, sex and class that are of considerable current interest. (1)

In our modern-day readings of literary texts, intersectionality has become not only

commonplace, but imperative in the analyzing of literature, in order to fully grasp the complex

layers of a given text. In the case of Nugent, his work can be viewed as only being truly understood

when critiquing the layers of black male and gay male identities. These themes in his writing are

inherently overlapping and interdependent. Wirth mentions that “Nugent was obviously influenced

by both the crosscurrents of the Harlem Renaissance and the evolving gay male literary tradition”

(1), meaning that Nugent felt he was contributing to both literary sectors, and by doing so carving

out his own niche.

It is also noteworthy that Nugent was able to move freely between white and black circles.

Nugent was a very light-skinned black man, and the ability to be accepted among white society as

a black person was no small feat in the early 20th century, and from that one would infer that

Nugent was aware of the freedom of movement that being light-skinned allowed him. So the earlier

remark from Rampersad in The New Negro that Nugent was “far more concerned with his gay

identity than with his sense of race or ethnicity” rings particularly untrue, as his work is

consciously aware of and draws upon experiences stemming from fluidity of movement among

races, and fluidity of sexuality and the overlapping circles of each environment.

Upon the inception of FIRE!!, the contributors of the journal called themselves the

“Niggerati,” an obvious impudent play on a word associated with intelligence, pretension and,

more importantly, a decidedly white audience. Wirth states about the Niggerati's intent:

The Niggerati figured among the more independent and rebellious of the younger

talents, who by 1926 had begun to chafe at the subtle and not-so-subtle censorship

involved in always putting their best feet forward for the sake of racial uplift. Like

their white contemporaries of “the lost generation,” they were convinced that great

art must be based on “truth,” however disagreeable that truth might be to some. (13)

The Lost Generation, the contemporaneous modernist literary movement that grew out of

the end of World War I, had major themes that were brutal and unbuttoned, not adhering to the

rules of polite society. The “truth,” in the writings of this period, refer to life’s gritty and depraved

occurrences which are as much a part of human existence as polity and manners, and the Niggerati

thought those things are worth talking about in art. If their white contemporaries can mention

these things, the black artistic elite should be able to speak about them as well.

This intent further expands the idea previously mentioned about sexuality and being seen

as a “race-traitor.” By using sexuality and other themes as a form of rebellion against “racial

uplift,” these artists are seeking to create “great art” through the means of rugged individualism.

Langston Hughes published the Niggerati's manifesto: “We younger Negro artists who create now

intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are

pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong

as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves” (14). There is a

sense of legacy in this statement. These writers hoped to create work that not only expressed their

truth, but also hoped to preserve a certain ignition of fire that could be related for generations of

black people to come. There is also a sense of freedom in Hughes’s words that also conjures up

images of being emancipated from slavery, free from the shackles imposed on them by whites and

their standards.

It was in this first and only issue of FIRE!! that Nugent published his story “Smoke Lilies

and Jade.” Written in a stream of consciousness, its explicit homoerotic detail made it the most

controversial piece in the publication. It describes Alex, and young man who goes out at night and

meets a male stranger, and then embarks on a sexual encounter with said stranger. Nugent's talent

is on full display here, as the work is beautifully written, lush with imagery and invokes a certain

dream-like state:

… Alex turned over and blew another cloud of smoke … was all life like that …

smoke … blue smoke from an ivory holder … he wished he were in New Bedford

… New Bedford was a nice place … snug little houses set complacently behind

protecting lawns … half-open windows showing prim interiors from behind waving

cool curtains … inviting … like precise courtesans winking from behind lace fans

… and trees … many trees … casting lacy patterns of shade on the sun-dipped

sidewalks … small stores … naively proud of their pseudo grandeur … banks …

called institutions for saving … all naive … that was it … New Bedford was naive

… after the sophistication of New York it would fan one like a refreshing breeze …

(78)

From a literary standpoint, this sample of Nugent’s vivid descriptions invokes a certain

aesthetic, keeping in line with the modernist influence of the Lost Generation and other white

contemporaries, who frequently used non-traditional literary practices in their work, such as run-

on sentences, or even just fragments, to create a certain musicality and conjure a certain feeling in

the text as it’s being read. By doing this, Nugent brings the reader into Alex’s vision, and as such

the reader is invited into the dream, envisioning what he envisions.

Alex has various contemplations as he lingers on his bed, about himself and his relationship

to his father’s death, and as he decided to get up and goes walking in the night, his thoughts turn

to misunderstanding of masculinity and of artists:

… why was it that men wouldn't use perfumes … they should … each and every one

of them like perfumes … the man who denied that was a liar … or coward … but if

ever he were to voice that thought … express it … he would be misunderstood … a

fine feeling that … to be misunderstood … it made him feel tragic and great … but

maybe it would be nicer to be misunderstood … no great artist is … then again neither

were fools … they were strangely akin these two … (79)

It is easy to equate this reference to perfume as a symbol of an effeminate, and therefore

potentially queer, male insight. It is also easy to equate this musing on misunderstanding to

queerness, and the traditional plight of repressed homosexuality, and what it means to have your

identity mistaken as a queer person, or purposely obfuscating your identity because of it. The idea

of feeling “tragic” and “great” is a typical stereotype in the realm of creatives. Some see great

artists as having tragic lives, which somehow intensifies their greatness. Nugent is also drawing

parallels to the tragedy of an artist and tragedy of being gay. The death of the queer character in

literature was, and, to a lesser extent, still is, common in moralistic tales of depravity. What makes

“Smoke, Lilies and Jade” unusual is that the queer protagonist does not face a gruesome demise.

Instead, he is portrayed as an interesting and thoughtful character who is worthy of the reader’s

sympathies. Cobb states:

Nugent offers a narrative form that instead of killing the queer character, instead of

forcing the queer’s rudeness to shock her or him right out of existence (like the short-

lived Fire!! itself), Nugent produces a narrative that kills its own pristine veneer, at

the level of the sentence, not at the level of the body. He produces an elliptical

roughness, reminding us that the queer deaths that seem necessary in most narratives

(even Giovanni has to die in Baldwin over twenty years later) are not really murders

but metaphors. This seems vital given the most irrefutable cultural death logic of a

world that would prefer to see the queer’s literal death. (347-348)

The mention of the elliptical structure as a “roughness” that is a tool used to disrupt the

glossy exterior of the text, Cobb assesses that this is Nugent’s way of producing the queer death,

without the queer person having to die. The use of the queer death in literature is an implication of

the queer as somehow wicked or evil, and the trope is used as a cautionary tale. It is also used as a

way to introduce a queer character into a story without ruffling the feathers of the reader. By killing

the character off it is still within good taste to read the story; after all, his demise is well deserved,

being queer and all, hence Cobb’s mention of “a world that would prefer to see the queer’s literal

death.” But instead, Nugent uses the ellipses to tell the story, rebelling against societal norms

through radicalization of literary devices. By doing so, Nugent is able to save his queer protagonist

from a fatal end, while still dismantling the gentility of the traditional literary form.

As the story progresses, Alex keeps walking into the night, and eventually meets up with

the stranger. As they play the initial game one does when first encountering someone they don’t

know on the street, it is then described how they went back to Alex’s apartment:

… they walked in silence … the castanets of their heels clicking accompaniment …

the stranger inhaled deeply and with a nod of content and a smile … blew a cloud of

smoke … Alex felt like singing … the stranger knew the magic of blue smoke also

… they continued in silence … the castanets of their heels clicking rhythmically …

Alex turned in his doorway … up the stairs and the stranger waited for him to light

the room … no need for words … they had always known each other ………

as they undressed by the blue dawn … Alex knew he had never seen a more

perfect being … his body was all symmetry and music … and Alex called him Beauty

… long they lay … blowing smoke and exchanging thoughts … and Alex swallowed

with difficulty … he felt a glow of tremor … and they talked … and slept … (81-82)

Nugent’s imagery here is masterful. The musicality in the steps (castanets, rhythmically

clicking heels), the illuminating visuals (blue smoke, blue dawn, glow of tremor) all help to

transport the reader into the scene, as if one is a bystander witnessing this interaction between two

men. His use of imagery also creates a hallucinatory-like haze, and what follows in his description

of Alex’s dreams as he drifts off to sleep creates a certain delicacy:

… Alex slept … and dreamed …..

he was in a field … a field of blue smoke and black poppies and red calla lilies … he

was searching … on his hands and knees … searching … among black poppies and

red calla lilies … he was searching and pushed aside poppy stems … and saw two

strong white legs … dancer's legs … the contours pleased him … his eyes wandered

… on past the muscular hocks to the firm white thighs … the rounded buttocks …

then the lithe narrow waist … strong torso and broad deep chest … the heavy

shoulders … the graceful muscled neck … squared chin and quizzical lips … Grecian

nose with its temperamental nostrils … the brown eyes looking at him … like …

Monty looked at Zora … his hair curly and black and all tousled … and it was Beauty

… and Beauty smiled and looked at him and smiled … said … I'll wait Alex … and

Alex became confused and continued his search … (82-83)

This matter-of-factness in describing the naked male form standing in front of Alex

conjures a certain tenderness. This is not a description of the queer facing hostility, or guilt, or

shame. Starting from the bottom and working his way up the male figure, each detail is described.

A reader will take notice of the mention of the male form’s white legs and thighs). Race isn’t an

explicit factor in this story but it is still important to notice that the male of his dreams is white

(his current lust interest, Beauty, is Spanish). With his muscular physique and Grecian nose, he is

Adonis material, the personification of the perfect male form. We, the readers, find ourselves

gazing up at this male form with Alex, as the illusory description fully transports the reader into

the scene, as Wirth states:

Even in the context of underground homoerotica, which was by then well established,

“Smoke, Lilies and Jade” was unique - a forthright, uncoded invitation of the reader

of any sexual orientation to enter the interior consciousness of a bisexual man and

assume a homophilic subjectivity. There is none of the guilt and anguish that had

previously characterized most writing about male same-sex desire and that would

continue to dominate gay literature for many decades. “Smoke, Lilies and Jade”

celebrates sexual attraction between men with exquisite sensitivity, without apology

or prurience. (41)

This is what makes this story trailblazing. It is the acclamation of same-sex desire, while

being transparent in its motivations, and told with such tenderness and compassion, that make this

work unique; and, as a testament to its elegant mechanics, completely worthy of analysis and

literary study.

Nugent’s continued use of imagery point to his literary inspirations. Take this sample from

the text that makes use of his illusory talents:

… and Alex awoke … Beauty's hair tickled his nose … Beauty was smiling in his

sleep … half his face stained flush color by the sun … the other half in shadow …

blue shadow … his eyelashes casting cobwebby blue shadows on his cheek … his

lips were so beautiful … quizzical … Alex wondered why he always thought of that

passage from Wilde's Salome … when he looked at beauty's lips … Alex flushed

warm … with shame … or was it shame … he reached across Beauty for a cigarette

… Beauty's cheek felt cool to his arm … his hair felt soft … Alex lay smoking …

such a dream … red calla lilies … red calla lilies … and … what did it all mean …

did dreams have meanings … (83)

It is plain to see that Nugent’s inspiration and knowledge of aestheticism clearly informs

his writing. Aestheticism (also known as Decadence, specifically relating to the French

movement) was a late 19th century British and French intellectual and artistic movement. It was

characterized as emphasizing aesthetic values over socio-political ones. The French Decadent

artists coined the term l’art pour l’art, from which the term “art for art’s sake” became a well-

known mantra pertaining to the ideals of the movement. The Decadent writers believed that the

arts need not have any educational purpose; it need only to be beautiful. It should simply provide

the reader sensual pleasure, and not provide moral messages or sentimentality. These Aesthetic

writers developed a cult of beauty and fully believed that was basic factor of art. Nugent was

very taken by this literary movement, and its influence is clear in his writing. Wirth writes:

As a gay writer, Nugent began squarely in what might be characterized as the

tradition of perfumed decadence. This line of development began with the

publication of Joris-Karl Huysmans notorious novel, A rebours, in Paris in 1884,

continued with his contemporaries in England in the 1880s and 1890s and flowered

in the United States in the 1920s in the novels of Carl van Vechten. Associated with

this literary tradition were artists like Aubrey Beardsley, the illustrator of the written

version of Wilde’s play Salome, and Erté, the Russian-born Parisian who dominated

the pages of Harper’s Bazaar during the 1920’s. (41)

À rebours is the story of Jean des Esseintes, an eccentric young man who tries to escape

contemporary society by withdrawing into an ideal world of his own creation. There are

comparisons to be made between À rebours and “Smoke, Lilies and Jade.” The most obvious

is that both stories are written almost exclusively from the solitary perspective of their

protagonist. Another is the male protagonists in each story go out in night and pick up a stranger

for a sexual encounter. In Huysmans’ story however, the homoeroticism, while nearly as

explicit, takes a much more negative tone. Wirth paraphrases from Huysmans regarding Des

Esseintes’s homosexual encounter: “The young man’s ‘arm brushed that of Des Esseintes, who

slowed his pace as he thoughtfully considered the young man’s mincing walk.’ A ‘mistrustful

relationship’ followed, which ‘lasted for months: Des Esseintes could no longer think of it

without a shudder; never had he submitted to a more seductive, more compelling servitude,

never had he experienced such dangers, yet never had he felt more painfully fulfilled’” (42).

From this quote, it is very clear to see how Nugent was influenced by the decadent literature

that had preceded him.

The Aesthetic writers were also very heavy on symbolism, and it is clear to see that

influence manifested in “Smoke, Lilies and Jade:”

… through his half-closed eyes he could see Beauty … propped … cheek in hand …

on one elbow … looking at him … lips smiling quizzically … he wished Beauty

wouldn't look so hard … Alex was finding it difficult to breathe … breathe normally

… why must Beauty look so long … and smile that way … his face seemed nearer

… it was … Alex could feel Beauty's hair on his forehead … breathe normally …

breathe normally … could feel Beauty's breath on his nostrils and lips … and it was

clean and faintly colored with tobacco … breathe normally Alex … Beauty's lips

were nearer … Alex closed his eyes … how did one act … his pulse was hammering

… from wrist to finger tip … wrist to finger tip … Beauty's lips touched his … his

temples throbbed … throbbed … breathe normally Alex … (84)

Throughout these snippets of the text, the effect of synesthesia is very heavily

incorporated in this story. Synesthesia is the (usually involuntary) stimulation of one sense by

another sense, and was very popularly used by the Decadent writers. In “Smoke, Lilies, and

Jade,” the frequent correlation of words, colors, and music is a deliberate invocation by Nugent

of the visual and auditory senses, almost seeming to invoke them interchangeably. The

repetition of “wrist to finger tip” and the sensation of touching lips thereby invokes a certain

tactile element, invoking yet another sense. All of these literary elements speak to Nugent’s

heavy influence by Decadent and Aesthetic ideals.

The importance of the technical style in “Smoke, Lilies and Jade” is just as, if not more

important, than the invocation of moods and feelings. Mention was made earlier on the ellipses as

metaphor for the queer death, instead of the literal killing of Alex. Nugent’s use of ellipses is a

also a dramatically modern technique, one that creates a certain mood as mentioned above, but

also one, that Cobb argues is an intentional provocation. He writes in “Insolent Racing:”

Immediately, the reader must wander through the text’s innovative form; the text is

composed entirely in an elliptical style; the entire story is a collection of phrases

divided by ellipses, calling to our attention, as most modernist works do, the form

used to express a thought or a feeling, especially thoughts or feelings that contradict

literary tradition [...] [Alex] prefers to think and explore his contrariness, his different

relationship to his father’s death, and, later, his different relationship to sexual desire.

It is through the medium of his smoky fragmented thoughts, Alex’s desires find

expression, despite their potentially scandalous forms. (344).

Nugent conjures up the mood and feeling of the text by both the literal form (use of ellipses)

and by illusory description (the “medium of smoky fragmented thoughts.”). Both of these elements

work together to create a feeling for the reader that is successfully executed, one that revels in the

expression of the protagonist as the reader progresses through his thoughts.

Cobb continues:

In the short story, the ellipsis is a crucial way to break with stricter literary

expressions. In the OED, one definition of ellipsis reads, “the omission of one or

more words in a sentence which would be needed to complete the grammatical

construction or fully to express the sense.” What makes Nugent’s story innovative is

that the ellipses do not necessarily thwart the narrative’s ability to tell a coherent

story - once he gets beyond the ellipses, one can read the story fluidly, as if it were

any stream of consciousness narration; [...] the ellipses are still serving a narrative

role - they serve to describe the grammar necessary for the production of such a

shocking, queer text. (344)

This is what makes Nugent’s story so successful. By using the ellipses, the reader does not

feel like he or she is missing anything from the text. In fact, instead of removing something from

the narrative, it fills in the gaps of the text, and the story still reads in a cohesive way. The stream

of consciousness is actually accentuated by this use of ellipses to progress the story.

Cobb makes one last observation about Nugent’s textual choices. He comments on the

stranger being referred to as Beauty: “And there is something thrilling about Nugent’s appropriate

choice of nickname for his queer love object, Beauty - it accentuates the desire for the question of

art to not only be a question of race, but also a question of sexuality” (348). It is this observation

that once again disproves Rampersad’s earlier comment about Nugent only caring about his sexual

identity and not his racial one. Nugent does care that the parallels be made. Beauty is Spanish, and

not accidentally. To Nugent, both of these distinctions are equally important and need to be cross-

referenced in order for him to be fully understood and appreciated, and he was well aware of that.

Wirth sums up Nugent's importance in the literary scene: “As a writer, Nugent stands at

the intersection of two separate literary traditions – black and gay. For his significance to be

properly assessed, he must be viewed simultaneously from both perspectives. The wider context

– American culture as it evolved during the first third of the twentieth century – must be considered

as well” (40). This sentiment should be echoed in the wider reading of work from Harlem

Renaissance writers. The intersectional reading of work through a black lens and queer lens helps

to fully analyze and appreciate the richness of these texts.

III. Langston Hughes and the Tradition of Coded Language

It is worth starting this section with the statement that Langston Hughes’s homo- or

bisexuality has never been confirmed. In “Reclaiming the Corporeal: The Black Male Body and

the ‘Racial Mountain’ in ‘Looking for Langston,’” Chi-Yun Shin mentions that Isaac Julien’s film,

Looking for Langston, got into hot water with the Hughes estate, stating:

[n]o doubt in part to the film’s homosexuality, the film provoked an antagonistic

response from the Hughes Estate which sought an injunction against showing the

film in the US. In response to the Estate’s legal claim, which was one of copyright

infringement, Julien had to have Hughes’s poetry replaced on the soundtrack.

Furthermore, when the film was screened at the New York Film Festival in 1989, the

audience was informed that owing to a copyright dispute the film’s sound would be

blocked out in two archival sequences of Langston Hughes’s reciting his poetry.

Clearly the legal difficulties Julien experienced with the Hughes estate themselves

constitute one key to understanding black masculinity as a highly policed terrain.

However, as many commentators have pointed out, the film is not a documentary

that seeks to find the truth about Hughes’s sexuality. The film, described by Julien

as a mediation, is a ‘poetic’ montage of various archival materials, dramatized

segments, poetry readings, and music from the past and present. (201)

Shin relates the legal trouble that Julien found himself in with the Hughes estate as being

subject to the “highly policed terrain” of black masculinity, which is an interesting suggestion. As

mentioned, the film Looking for Langston has nothing to do with Hughes’s personal sexual

proclivities. While Hughes’s family sued on the basis of copyright infringement, the underlying

suggestion of policing black masculinity suggests that they just didn’t want Hughes’s work

connected to a film with homosexual overtones, (and probably also rejected use of the name

“Langston” in the title) and used the copyright violation as an excuse to have his poetry removed

from the film. While speculation is rampant, there is simply no concrete evidence that suggests

Hughes was, in fact, homosexual. Similarly, there is no evidence that suggests he wasn’t either.

But by treating heterosexuality as the “default sexuality,” as western society so often does, means

that Hughes gets put, by society and presumably by Hughes family, into the “straight until proven

otherwise” camp of sexual activity. In the first volume of his biography of Langston Hughes,

Arnold Rampersad suggested that Hughes wasn’t homosexual at all, and went to great lengths to

not present publicly any particular proclivity:

His fatalism was well placed. Under such pressure, Hughes’s sexual desire, such as

it was, became not so much sublimated as vaporized. He governed his sexual desires

to an extent rare to a normal adult male: whether his appetite was normal and adult

is impossible to say. He understood, however, that Cullen and Locke offered him

nothing he wanted, or nothing that promised much for him or his poetry. If certain of

his responses to Locke seemed like teasing (a habit Hughes would never quite lose

with women, or perhaps, men) they were not therefore necessarily signs of sexual

desire: more likely, they showed the lack of it. Nor should one infer quickly that

Hughes was held back by a greater fear as a homosexual than his friends had: of the

three men, he was the only ready, indeed eager, to be perceived as disreputable. (69)

By stating that Hughes showed lack of sexual desire, Rampersad is suggesting that Hughes

was perhaps asexual. However, in volume two of his biography of Hughes, Rampersad does state

that Hughes’s interest in certain men was observed, stating “...Hughes found some young men,

especially dark-skinned men, appealing and sexually fascinating. (Both in his various artistic

representations, in fiction especially, and in his life, he appears to have found young white men of

little sexual appeal.) Virile young men of very dark complexion fascinated him” (336). Carl van

Vechten, one of Hughes’s close friends, stated that he also wasn’t certain of Hughes’s proclivities,

but didn’t believe, as Rampersad did, that Hughes was asexual:

When Carl van Vechten said that he “never had … any indication that [Hughes] was

homosexual or heterosexual,” he was not suggesting that Hughes was asexual or did

not desire. Instead, he was remaining faithful to Hughes himself, who studiously

cultivated a suspicious of sexual identity and attended with much more interest to the

conditions of queer sociality. Hughes resisted name and fixing his desire, not out of

internalized shame or the logic of the closet, but out of what bell hooks proposes we

might think of as his “perverse regard” for desire itself, its mysteries and

uncertainties. (Vogel 418)

These seemingly contradictory accounts do nothing to divulge, one way or the other,

Hughes’s true feelings. All this speculation, however, didn’t stop gay anthologies and queer

theorists from claiming Hughes as one of their own. The argument has been made that Hughes’

poetry contains coded language, in the spirit of Walt Whitman, that illuminates certain subtleties

that can been interpreted as being homosexual in nature. In Gay Rebel, Wirth writes that “[e]ven

Nugent, one of Hughes’s closest friends in 1925 and 1926, was unable to state unequivocally

whether Hughes was sexually attracted to men or not although he suspected Hughes was” (55).

This queer reading of Hughes’s poetry can be seen as infusing his poems with a richness, and

owing to its greater appeal. In stark contrast to Richard Bruce Nugent’s approach to the topic of

sexuality in his writing, the poetry of Langston Hughes is a much less flamboyant, but no less

arresting, approach to homosexual themes. His poetic style was simple yet elegant, with stark

language that held a cadence and musicality inspired by jazz.

Some of the poetry that is referred to as perhaps homosexual in nature is extremely

circumspect. Wirth writes,

Some of Hughes’s early poetry can be interpreted as the expression of same-sex

desire, but that work is only a tiny part of his enormous oeuvre. Nonetheless, those

examples are notable. ‘Consider Poem [2]’.

I loved my friend.

He went away from me.

There’s nothing more to say.

The poem ends,

Soft as it began, -

I loved my friend. (55)

This example asks more questions than it answers. Who is this friend? Why did he go

away? What kind of love did the speaker have for his friend? Romantic? Platonic? Who is the

speaker of this poem? One of the most appealing things about Hughes’s poetry is that he almost

never makes clear whom the speaker is. There is not much to be taken from this particular poem,

thus, much can be infused. To give a queer reading to this poem would be to suggest that the

speaker is male (perhaps Hughes himself, perhaps not). “He went away from me” can suggest any

number of reasons, perhaps he fell in love with another, perhaps he died, perhaps he left town for

any number of circumstances. “The poem ends / soft as it began” adds a tenderness to the mood

of the poem, which perhaps might suggest a sensual or sexual feeling for his “friend.” The

ambiguity of the both the speaker and the “friend” allow for various possible suggestions of

meaning behind the poem, which together work convincingly into a queer reading of this poem.

Another Hughes poem, “Boy,” can be read as an expression of sexual desire:

He was somewhat like Ariel

And somewhat like Puck

And somewhat like a gutter boy

Who loves to play in muck.

He has something of Bacchus

And something of Pan

And a way with women

Like a sailor man.

He was straight and slender

And solid with strength

And lovely as a tree

All his virile length.

He couldn’t have been a good man,

All shut up in a cell

‘Cause he’d “rather be a sinner,”

He said, - “and go to hell.” (Wirth 56)

In the first stanza, the speaker refers to Ariel, the sprite from Shakespeare’s The Tempest,

and Puck, the sprite from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The speaker is describing

a youthful fellow, perhaps a playfully mischievous man who doesn’t take himself too seriously by

playing in muck. In the second stanza, the speaker references Bacchus, the Roman name for

Dionysus and god of wine, grape harvests, ritual madness, and religious ecstasy, and Pan, god of

the wild, nature, shepherds and flocks. Referencing both gods is suggestive of this unnamed boy’s

sexual prowess. Both Bacchus and Pan were companions to nymphs, and are often represented in

art with phallic symbolism. Comparing this boy to a sailor alludes to his promiscuity, at least

specifically with women. In the third stanza, the speaker is describing the boy’s physical

characteristics, strong and slender, and “lovely as a tree,” and then alluding to his virility, which

is again a symbol of a strong sex drive. Only in the last stanza do we hear from the boy himself.

First the speaker provides another character assumption – “He couldn’t have been a good man /

All locked up in a cell” – suggesting that this boy has been to prison. Then the boy responds that

he would rather be a sinner and go to hell than to be a good man, presumably because sinners have

more fun, alluding back to Bacchus and Pan with their penchant for wine and frivolity. Again, we

are left with questions: who is this Boy? Who is the speaker? What is the relationship of the speaker

to the Boy? The ambiguity that we don’t know the gender of speaker can easily paint him as a man

who looks at the Boy from afar, either wanting to be him, or lusting after him. Hughes purposely

doesn’t provide too much information, and leaves it up to the reader to fill in the blanks.

Besides a brief mention of a sailor in “Boy,” Hughes’s eloquence about sailors has been

well-documented. “Port Town” is another poem whose context is perhaps sexually ambiguous:

Hello, sailor boy,

In from the sea!

Hello, sailor,

Come with me!

Come on drink cognac,

Rather have wine?

Come here, I love you,

Come and be mine (Wirth 56)

The first stanza uses Hughes’s typical concise language. The speaker is in a port town and

he or she sees a sailor boy, and then asks the sailor to accompany him or her somewhere. The

second stanza ask the sailor boy what he prefers to drink, the implication being that it doesn’t

matter, he or she loves him, just be with him or her. Again, the same questions resurface: who is

the speaker? Who is this sailor boy? What relationship do they have, if any? There is also an air

of impermanence and longing, a fleeting feeling in the air. Does he or she really “love” the sailor,

or does he or she just love him right now, for what he can provide, namely sexual satisfaction and

relief from loneliness?

The simple elegance of Hughes’s poetry is obvious, yet also understated. There is

something fragile about the ambiguity of the speakers in his poems. In “Heroic ‘Hussies’ and

‘Brilliant Queers’: Genderracial Resistance in the Works of Langston Hughes,” Anne Borden

states:

To Hughes, identity is inseparable from, and indeed central to, one’s artistry, His

work is strengthened by a poetic imagination which enters the consciousness of those

with varying experiences. Hughes’s images are at times disturbing, also comforting,

alternately sad and joyous, and directly connected to his identity as a Black man, who

heard the voices of many - white and of Color, male and female, gay and straight,

within and without himself. (333)

This is a very poignant description of how identity is so crucial to Hughes’s work. Borden

is suggesting that his poetry doesn’t simply take the voice of a male speaker, or female speaker, or

a white speaker or a black speaker. Hughes permeates all identities, they are the voices he has

heard from others and these are the voices inherent within him – that when combined within

Hughes’s identity create these unique voices of speakers of various races, genders, and sexual

identities. The “poetic imagination” lies within the reader, whoever might be reading his poem at

the time, who brings to his or her reading of his work a specific set of past experiences, specific

identities, who is infusing these past experiences into the reading. Hughes, on the other hand, puts

forth his words, and these words act as a vessel for interpretation. But the point Borden really

makes is that for all Hughes’s effort at completely stripping himself from his words, they are never

totally objective. Hughes is still a black man, and his words are still as objective as they can be,

while still coming from the mind an individual with a particular identity. No matter how little

Hughes brings of himself into his work, he still permeates in the text for no other reason than it is

his, and it is impossible for anyone to strip away his or her own identity completely in his or her

artistic output.

Another poem that has been interpreted as having a homosexual undercurrent is “Desire.”

Desire to us

Was like a double death,

Swift dying

Of our mingled breath,

Evaporation

Of an unknown strange perfume

Between us quickly

In a naked

Room. (“Desire”)

This mention of “us” utilizes Hughes’s typical style of an ambiguous speaker and

ambiguous object of attention. The double death is can be a reference orgasm by both parties (Le

Petit Mort), or could just be a reference to danger of having a homosexual encounter, the “desire”

itself like a double death for daring to partake in an illicit action. “Swift dying / of our mingled

breath” is a reference to the comedown after sex. “Evaporation / Of an unknown strange perfume”

is an interesting line, because is the perfume strange because it is unknown? Or for some other

reason? The enjambment between “In a Naked / Room” is compelling. One sees the word “naked”

and jumps to conclusions that the speaker is referring to himself or herself and the person he or

she is with. But they’re not the only two naked. The room is bare as well. It is easy to plug just

about any combination of genders in this room, which makes it easy to read this poem as a

homosexual encounter.

Another poem of Hughes’s with purported hidden meaning is “Joy.”

I went to look for Joy,

Slim, dancing Joy,

Gay, laughing Joy,

Bright-eyed Joy–

And then I found her

Driving the butcher’s cart

In the arms of the butcher boy!

Such company, such company,

As keeps this young nymph, Joy! (Johnson 54)

This poem is deceptive in that it’s easy to conclude that “Joy” must be a woman. The

speaker even refers to “Joy” as “she.” But there are alternate readings of this poem that can provide

different, and even more convincing conclusions. Joy can be read as metaphor for the feeling or

emotion evoked by a male object of affection. The opening lines describe Joy as “Slim, dancing,

Joy / Gay laughing Joy / Bright-eyed Joy.” This capital-J Joy can be a mood for the person the

speaker is really looking at. When the speaker finds “her,” Joy is “driving the butcher’s cart / In

the arms of a butcher boy!” The leads to the possibility that Joy could be the butcher boy, or

someone in the cart with the butcher boy. “Such company, such company / As keeps this young

nymph, Joy!” is the implication that there is something unsavory about keeping the butcher boy’s

company. Or alternatively, as previously suggested, the speaker finds Joy in the butcher boy’s

arms and marvels at how Joy can be found where you least expect it. By Hughes keeping the poem

loose, with no names, places or sense of time, it is easy to incorporate various meanings in his

work.

Yet another poem with potential homosexual content is “Water-Front Streets.”

The spring is not so beautiful there–

But dream ships sail away

To where the spring is wondrous rare

And life is gay.

The spring is not so beautiful there–

But lads put out to sea

Who carry beauties in their hearts

And dreams, like me. (Johnson 55)

As usual, the first stanza begins with Hughes’s vague locations (“The spring is not so

beautiful there–” where’s there?) and vague speaker (who is speaking?). But “there” is a place

where dreams die, and as their ships sail away, “to where the spring is wondrous rare” – again

where would that be? – the speaker appears to speculate that life is better in that new place, with a

beautiful spring. The second stanza begins as the first, lamenting a non-beautiful spring, but the

next two lines are telling: “But lads put out to sea / Who carry beauties in their hearts” is a

description of sailors being shipped back out. As was mentioned earlier, Hughes’s penchant for

sailors has been documented. It has been suggested that Hughes wrote many letters and

unpublished poems to a man he was supposedly involved with that he called Beauty. Knowing this

information about Hughes, a reader can easily speculate about the nature of this poem. Does the

speaker carry Beauty in his heart, as well as dreams? It is not suggested that this poem is

autobiographical, but it does lend itself to a homosexual interpretation.

Another poem with much speculation surrounding it is Hughes’s poem “Trumpet Player.”

The Negro

With the trumpet at his lips

Has dark moons of weariness

Beneath his eyes

where the smoldering memory

of slave ships

Blazed to the crack of whips

about thighs

The Negro

with the trumpet at his lips

has a head of vibrant hair

tamed down,

patent-leathered now

until it gleams

like jet—

were jet a crown

the music

from the trumpet at his lips

is honey

mixed with liquid fire

the rhythm

from the trumpet at his lips

is ecstasy

distilled from old desire—

Desire

that is longing for the moon

where the moonlight's but a spotlight

in his eyes,

desire

that is longing for the sea

where the sea's a bar-glass

sucker size

The Negro

with the trumpet at his lips

whose jacket

Has a fine one-button roll,

does not know

upon what riff the music slips

It's hypodermic needle

to his soul

but softly

as the tune comes from his throat

trouble

mellows to a golden note (“Trumpet Player”)

The first stanza is a very sensuous description of a black trumpet player. Body parts are

described (lips, eyes, thighs), and even though it evokes imagery of slaves being brought over on

the slave ship, the language to describe the trumpet player is quite lush (“smoldering memory”)

for a man who seems fatigued and world weary as he reflects on the past black experience. The

second stanza describes his hair, how it has been slicked down (“tamed”) in a style that was very

popular with black musicians at the time, resembling a patent-leather crown on his head. The third

stanza describes the music emanating from the trumpet players, how smooth the music is (“honey

/ mixed with liquid fire”) and the passion and feeling evoked from the rhythm (“ecstasy / distilled

from old desire”). The “old desire,” as described in the fourth stanza, is a yearning for the moon

and sea. But the trumpet player’s moon now is his spotlight on stage, his sea is merely liquor in a

bar glass.

The fifth stanza is again a description of the trumpet player, this time his clothes, as he

sinks into the music, apparently unaware of when he lets the music take over his thoughts, but it

does. The final stanza describes a man whose pain is assuaged by music. Again, the same questions

arise: who is the speaker? What is the relationship of the speaker and the trumpet player?

Depending on the answer to these questions, this poem could another example of homoerotic

admiration.

Another Hughes poem with a more obvious queer undercurrent is “Café: 3 A.M.” simply

because it specifically addresses this demographic:

Detectives from the vice squad

with weary sadistic eyes

spotting fairies.

Degenerates

some folks say.

But God, Nature,

or somebody,

made them that way.

Police lady or Lesbian

Over there?

Where? (Vogel 411)

The first stanza has a somewhat violent undertone. It is 3 o’clock in the morning. The police

officers who have entered have the café have “sadistic eyes,” implying that they are purposely

singling out anyone who looks like a “fairy,” for no other reason than to cause pain or discomfort

to them. The second stanza has “degenerates” in italics, emphasizing what others, and presumably

also the cops, think of these people. But the third stanza takes an almost sympathetic tone

regarding these individuals who are about to be raided. The idea that they were made this way, by

“God, Nature, or somebody,” implies a certain compassion, that the speaker feels perhaps they

shouldn’t be targeted for something that is just a part of his or her fabric of identity. The closing

stanza asks a question, is that a police lady or a lesbian? The emphatic “where?” at the end draws

the reader to also look across the room to see who we are looking at, to see if the reader can tell

whether we are gazing upon a cop or lesbian. Of course, our modern sensibility would instantly

argue that she can be both, but this last stanza also invokes a feeling using what we would term

today “gaydar.” The same questions that we have been facing in the other poems we have been

looking at also arise here: who is the speaker? Is the speaker actually inside the café or looking

from outside as the cops are about to raid? Is the speaker one of the “degenerates” of which he or

she speaks?

“Café: 3 A.M.” needs to be delved into with more detail. In “Closing Time: Langston

Hughes and the Queer Poetics of Harlem Nightlife,” Shane Vogel states that this poem draws

references to the afterhours club, and that what goes on after hours has an inherent illicit nature

that can be compared to the illicit nature of queer culture of that time. Vogel writes:

Closing time marks the passage to the time and space of afterhours, a temporality

that unfolds in defiance of city and moral law to create fugitive spaces like the

afterhours club. The afterhours club allows for a heterogenous assortment of figures

and subjective possibilities, especially as they consolidate disparate nightlife

populations into their operation. Afterhours sociability brackets the world “out there”

and creates a sense of an autonomous time and place where normal social

configurations are undone or done differently. Sitting at the interface of racially

mixed and sexually deviant social space, such clubs were often important institution

sites of black commercial urban recreation and amusement, as well as part of a

network of spaces - bathhouses, city streets, piers and waterfronts, rent parties,

YMCAs, “black and tans” - through which semipublic sexual cultures developed.

(402)

Here, Vogel is explaining that such afterhours businesses, such as a café that is open at 3

A.M., became safe havens for people who could not otherwise conduct themselves freely during

the day, either because of society stigmas or laws that were enforced during daylight hours.

Afterhours places repealed the norms of society and it was in these darkened spaces that

homosexuals could be free in expressing their identity, blacks and whites can patronize the same

institutions, and other “taboo” behaviors could be expressed without retribution. It is these haunts

that Hughes took to visiting, wherein he became a keen observer of the individuals who frequented

these places. In explaining just how important these spaces became in the queer community of

Hughes’s time, Vogel writes,

In expanding the “boundaries of normalcy,” in the words of historian George

Chauncey, such spaces not only shaped the emergence of a modern gay and lesbian

community, but also more broadly created new possibilities for momentarily close

contact, public intimacy, and affective exchange. Thus while afterhours is one

condition of possibility for a homosexual subculture, it is not synonymous with it.

Instead, afterhours marks a time of subjective possibility that could include but

always exceeds the closures of “sexual identity” as such. (43)

Vogel has put forth an interesting observation here. By referring to these spaces “expanding

the ‘boundaries of normalcy,’” Vogel gives direct credit of contemporary queer communities to

the institutions that originally housed these spaces. Queer culture is obviously much more

mainstream that it used to be and therefore much less subversive, but it was the initial use of these

afterhours spaces that provided the grouping of likeminded individuals to come together, and

become the generally more lenient (for the most part) society we have today. Vogel continues:

What makes these congregations queer is not the telelogy of sexual object choice,

but these subjects’ relations to dominant society. The afterhours club, as sociologists

Julian Roebuck and Wolfgang Frese show, constitutes a setting “for deviants to act

‘normally’ and for ‘straights’ to act ‘deviantly.’ In other words, like the

epistemological reversal Hughes effects in “Café: 3 A.M.,” the afterhours club twists

and reverses - queers - the normalizing inscriptions of time and space. (406)

The way Vogel describes the afterhours club “queering” time and space is very poignant.

This is the crux of Vogel’s argument - that the afterhours club allows for the role reversal of the

dominant versus the minority roles in society. Which asks the question, when Hughes spent time

at the afterhours club, which role was he taking part in? Was he the closeted homosexual allowed

to be his authentic self, or the heterosexual acting out his most deviant desires? Was he doing

neither? Was he doing both? It was evident Hughes was very familiar with this life, as he

personally spent much of his time in afterhours establishments, observing the clientele:

Hughes was familiar with these queer social spaces and befriended many people who

are known to have engaged in non-normative sexual behaviors. Hughes recalls the

Hamilton Lodge Ball as the place “where men dress as women and women dress as

men” and they all assemble in a “queerly assorted throng on the dancing floor” in his

memoir The Big Sea. (Moore 25)

It is clear Hughes had an affinity for this afterhours scene, whether an active participant or

merely and observer. These real-life patrons of these institutions were obviously fodder for the

characters in his work, but was that merely all? Obviously, it’s impossible to say. But is clear he

drew from his own personal experiences of frequenting this queer scene. This may be the only

instance the reader has of Hughes injecting himself into his poem, albeit indirectly. The poem also

has an air of being from a different time, as Vogel states:

Café: 3 A.M. is the only oeuvre where Hughes explicitly references the terminology

of homosexual deviance (“degenerates,” “fairies,” and “Lesbians”), and the poem’s

thematic interest in indeterminate and uncertain identity resonates with the vice

policing of the Progressive Era and its pre-closet sexual epistemologies. In fact,

though the poem was published in the 1950s, there is nothing to suggest that it does

not take place in the 1920s, looking back to a time when sexual group identifications

allowed for a greater movement of desire. It is, in many ways, a poem out of time,

harkening back on the eve of a sexually and politically conservative decade to an

earlier moment. (408)

This description of “Café: 3 A.M.” complements the questions that have been raised

throughout this close reading of Hughes’s poems. His purposeful ambiguity of his speaker, the

relationship the speaker has with the object of his attention, can be made to fit any scenario. In

“Café: 3 A.M.,” we don’t even know what decade this poem is set. It could have been at the time

it was written, the 1950s, or it could have hearkened back to Hughes’s youth, the 1920s during the

height of the Harlem Renaissance. But the poem’s direct use of the words “degenerates,” “fairies”

and “lesbians” marks a shift in Hughes from coded language to more direct references, perhaps in

direct response to the staunch conservatism sweeping the nation at the time the poem was written.

Vogel states that “Hughes’s commitment from early in his career to the musical and sexual

underworlds of Harlem’s nightlife and his valorization of the black folk as something other than a

mass to be elevated often made it a challenge to assimilate his work into the cultural uplift

endeavors of the black middle class” (Vogel 408). “Café: 3 A.M.” reflects the atmosphere of

society at the time, and Hughes is holding up a mirror to the attitudes of the prevailing society,

with it vice policing of people they deemed a detriment to the majority’s character. Vogel states:

The death that marks the limit of nightlife in Hughes’s poems is the return to that

mode of official participation in American life that Lauren Berlant calls “dead

citizenship.” Dead citizenship ensures and enforces a correspondence between act

and identity within the space and time of abstract nationality and privatized

heterosexuality. Even as Harlem Renaissance leader like W.E.B. Du Bois, Alain

Locke, and Charles Johnson were fighting for full participation in American

citizenship, many black queer writers and performers – including Hughes – were

challenging the sexual and class normativity on which that citizenship was based.

The characters in Hughes’s cabaret poems are not “good” racial or American

subjects, nor are they always black proletarian voices. They are criminal and lumpen

objects who implicitly critique and consciously reject the imperative of dead

citizenship, racing the clock for as long as they can. (414)

This idea of “dead citizenship” is interesting. The argument is that Hughes was fighting

against this dead citizenship – the idea that the only citizens of the country whose voices matter

are those who uphold a moral tradition of heterosexuality, not just in public but in private as well

– in the name of challenging preconceived notion of class and sexual identity, and challenging

what it means to be normal, or if there even is such thing as normal. Many characters in Hughes’s

poems are not upholders of the race. They are reprobates who resist this “dead citizenship,”

providing an alternate view of life lived not to the norms set for by society, but lived by one’s

authentic identity.

Not all of Hughes’s characters are criminals with queer or otherwise suspect backgrounds.

The most obvious Hughes work with more blatant homosexual overtones is Hughes’s short story

entitled “Blessed Assurance.” Written much later in Hughes’s career, in 1961, long after most

agreed was the end of the Harlem Renaissance, it is worthy of mention here because it deals with

the theme of black male queerness and the scope of that queerness in a religious environment.

Hughes had long been solidified as a literary icon of black letters by the time “Blessed Assurance”

was published, which makes it very interesting to note the time in Hughes’s career that he publishes

an overtly queer themed work. In In the Life and In the Spirit: Homoerotic Spirituality in African-

American Literature, Marlon Rachquel Moore states that the timing of this work into Hughes’s

oeuvre is noteworthy:

The appearance of “Blessed Assurance” might seem significant simply because it

could offer insight into the rumors that Hughes had maintained inconspicuous

homosexual relationships with the domestic partners and travel companions who

were often seen accompanying him after he bought a townhome in Harlem in 1948.

But even in the rebellious, revolutionary spirit of the 1960s, the politics of the day

were such that the Harlem poet laureate would risk his standing as literary royalty

were he to make such an acknowledgment. By then he was an elder of the arts […].

He was very much a respectable representative of the race. (24)

Itis interesting to note that Hughes was a “respectable representative” of black artists. After

all, it was this idea of “respectability” that he was vocal about dismantling, the idea that only those

who adhere to society’s rules about “upholding the race” are deemed worthy. But while his

characters may have sordid backgrounds and may have had different experiences, it is one thing

to write a story about such people, still another to vocal express your homosexual tendencies as

being part of your personal life. “Blessed Assurance” may have been the way to externalize the

internal for Hughes. He was older and secure in his career, and a short story of a father battling

with his young queer son veiled in a religious tale may be have an outlet he needed without giving

himself away.

As Moore states, one of the prevalent things about this short story is how the queer

character is utilized:

The real importance of “Blessed Assurance,” though, is that in it Hughes does not

deploy gender transgression solely for comedic purposes (as he does in his plays). At

the age of sixty-one, he created a space for addressing effeminate masculinity in a

church community by offering a tale of an aging father, John, struggling to accept

his son’s homosexuality. […] With humor, sarcasm, and the poet’s keen ability to

capture truth in tiny snippets, “Blessed Assurance” illustrates how, in E. Patrick

Johnson’s words, the body is the one organizing site of multiple and competing

signifiers within the black church service. John’s queer son, Delmar, is one such

body. He stands at the center of the story as a site of triangulated and competing

signifiers of black masculinity: the patriarch, the preacher, and the “punk.” (27)

This is a very interesting observation that details how Hughes framed his short story. As

was mentioned above, the queer character wasn’t inserted in the story for comic relief, but as a

symbol of resistance against two overtly dominating forces in a young black man’s life, his church

and his father. The father’s reaction to the son’s burgeoning homosexuality is at times both funny

and sad:

That Spring he asked, “Delmar, do you have to wear white Bermuda shorts to school?

Most of the other boys wear Levi’s or just plain pants, don’t they? And why wash

them out yourself every night, all that ironing? I want you to be clean, son, but not

that clean.” … Another time, “Delmar, those school togs of yours don’t have to

match so perfectly, do they? Colors blended, as you say … The boys’ll think you’re

sissy.” … Once again, desperately, “If you’re going to smoke, Delmar, hold your

cigarette between your first two fingers, not between your thumb and finger like a

woman.” (28)

John’s desperate attempts to get Delmar to change by pointing out his son’s effeminate

tendencies makes for a bittersweet reading of this story. You can sympathize with the father for

not understanding his son, but at the same time you hope Delmar maintains his strength to be true

to his own identity. Delmar is described in the story as a “brilliant queer,” a well-rounded

individual who excels in school. But in this particular quote above, his brilliance is also physical,

shining above other black boys in manner of dress of behavioral patterns. He is brilliant in the

sense of cleanliness, which relates to female domesticity, by his nonconforming sense of fashion,

and most importantly, by the holding of a cigarette, a suggestion of posturing and swagger in the

pose of masculine disaffection. While we don’t wish Delmar to be forced to change by his father,

it is easy to see John’s perspective, as he is steeped deeply into society’s conditioning of black

masculinity:

John’s attempts to “correct” his son’s behavior represent hegemonic blackness and,

from his perspective, he is doing what is best for his son. He is concerned about his

son’s transition into adulthood because “the boy is colored [and] Negroes have

enough crosses to bear.” In other words, John is aware that the obstacles of systemic

racism are varied and nebulous enough to thwart black men’s dreams without the

additional fallout from the homophobic surveillance of sexuality in and outside black

communities. To be black and identifiably queer is to be marked for social (and

sometimes physical) crucifixion. So, John is concerned about the weight of the

homosexual stigma for Delmar, and crucially, for himself because Delmar’s

improper performance of masculinity reflects directly on John as the patriarch. (29)

These points that John makes are not without merit. He knows how difficult life as a black

man can be, the intrinsic discrimination a black man receives simply for existing. So to add the

discrimination of being homosexual to his already tough situation, John is trying to make Delmar

conform to the behavior of heterosexual masculinity. Today we refer to this as “straight-acting,”

in the hopes of “passing” for heterosexual. At first this makes John not seem so terrible, as he

seems more interested in making sure Delmar is perceived as heterosexual by others, not that he

necessarily has to actually be straight. But then John makes certain comments that suggest he not

just simply trying to get his son to “pass,” but is in fact himself homophobic:

“God, don’t let him put an earring in his ear like some,” John prayed. He wondered

vaguely with a sick feeling in his stomach should he think it through then then [sic]

think it through right then through should he try then and think it through should

without Blacking through think Blacking out then and there think it through? John

didn’t. (30-31)

Here, John’s denial about his son’s homosexuality is seemingly more than just concern for

his son’s well-being in a hostile society. The thought of his son being gay gives him a literal “sick

feeling in his stomach,” and trying not to black out takes great physical and emotional stress. The

thought of coming to terms with (and perhaps accepting?) the fact his son might be homosexual is

perhaps outside the grasp of his cognitive reach, at least for now. His attempt to “think it through”

that his son might be queer failed miserably. His uneasiness is steeped in the old-school tradition

of what being a “respectable” upholder of the race means, and the changing landscape of that

tradition with the civil rights movement taking hold in Delmar’s generation and redefining black

representation is something that hasn’t yet fully reached John.

It is worth noting, however, that Delmar doesn’t take heed to his father’s wishes to present

himself in a more heteronormative light. In fact, he is encouraged to embrace his difference and

his queerness against the pressure from his father by the minister of music in his church. Moore

states, “As the story continues, it becomes clear that John competes with other influences, other

representations of manhood in Delmar’s life. In spite of his efforts to dull it with normative

correctives, Delmar’s queerness remains radiant.” (29-30). The minister here is an important figure

to the story and is also cast as an effeminate character. The character of effeminate church leaders

is somewhat common in black stories of this time set in a church environment, and the minister

here is no different, a widespread notion being that ministers of music in black churches frequently

were in fact effeminate, and often lead the gay subculture that exists in black churches.

Moore sums up his argument by stating:

“Blessed Assurance” is a Gay Christian Narrative that successfully transforms

gender transgressions into a critique of heterosexism and hegemonic blackness

through its blend of sacred music and gender nonconformity, as well as the

characters’ appropriation of the Book of Ruth for their same-sex romance. […] When

Hughes places the celebrated oath of loyalty from the Book of Ruth into the mouth

of the “sweet” choirboy, he illuminates the queer erotics that often surge through the

homosocial bonds in gospel choirs. (37-38)

The Book of Ruth in contemporary readings has become interpreted as a model for lesbian

relations and female self-sufficiency, although it not completely certain that that was the allusion

Hughes was making here. What is certain, however, is that Hughes is successful in using the church

as a sacred and holy space and challenging the ideas of heteronormativity in black culture. A queer

reading of Langston Hughes is imperative in understanding and appreciating the deeper meanings

of his poetry. His short story “Blessed Assurance” is his most overtly homosexual story, which

lends itself to the idea that a queer reading of his earlier work is not only useful, but necessary.

Whether Hughes was gay in real life is irrelevant in the understanding and appreciating the

queerness of his work. His speakers were gay and straight, white and black, male and female, and

he seamlessly permeated all these identities, by being none of them.

IV. Final Thoughts

What else is there to be said regarding reading the work of the Harlem Renaissance with a

queer lens as well as a racial lens? Plenty. Given the evidence above, a queer reading of Langston

Hughes illuminates his poetry and gives meaningful interpretation to his sparse, simple language.

This sparseness and ambiguity, of course, is argued by some as being intentional. Hughes wants

the reader to interpret in between the lines to fully understand his meaning. His careerlong devotion

to purposely obfuscating who the speakers of his poems are, and the nature of the relationships of

those the speakers were addressing, combined with his commitment to be purposely vague

regarding his romantic and sexual encounters, leads one to be believe that perhaps this is all an

elaborate ruse. But if so, so what? This doesn’t take away from his poems. Just the contrary: this

mystique only adds a complexity to his work that analyzing solely on the surface doesn’t provide.

It forces the reader to do some work on his or her end, with the takeaway being an enriching

cultural and reading experience.

For the work of Richard Bruce Nugent, on the other hand, a queer analysis of his work is

absolutely crucial for the reader’s interpretation. Nugent is much more overt than Hughes in his

representation of homosexuality in his writing. But it is plain to see that both writers benefit from

this particular reading of his work. Without interpreting the queer component alongside the racial

component of each writer’s work, the reader misses out on the richness and complexity of layers

of the text. The racial element may be more prominent, and in the case of Nugent, the queer element

may be just as prominent, if not more so, but it is up to the reader to figure out what’s really going

on in the text, and may require some deciphering of coded language. To not do so is to not fully

comprehend these rich works.

This queer reading of texts isn’t only beneficial to Hughes and Nugent. Many Harlem

Renaissance works have either coded or overt homosexual themes, and it would incomplete to not

view them in conjunction with their racial and sexual congruencies. From Nella Larsen’s Passing,

to Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, many works from this movement demand

a queer reading of the text alongside its racial reading to fully be appreciated, and readers of the

current generation look be the more open to allowing this intersectionality to inform their digestion

of these complex and layered texts.

Works Cited

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Works of Langston Hughes.” African American Review, vol. 28, no. 3, 1994, pp. 333–

345. JSTOR.

Cobb, Michael L. “Insolent Racing, Rough Narrative: The Harlem Renaissance's Impolite

Queers.” Callaloo, vol. 23, no. 1, 2000, pp. 328–351. JSTOR.

“Desire – Langston Hughes.” Biblioklept, 13 Aug 2013,

https://biblioklept.org/2013/08/13/desire-langston-hughes/

Gates, Henry Louis, and Nellie Y. McKay, editors. The Norton Anthology of African

American Literature. W.W. Norton & Co., 1997.

Johnson, Dianne, editor. The Collected Works of Langston Hughes. vol 11, University of

Missouri Press, 2003

Moore, Marlon Rachquel. In the Life and In the Spirit: Homoerotic Spirituality in African

American Literature. SUNY Press, 2014.

Rampersad, Arnold. The Life of Langston Hughes. vol. 1, Oxford University Press, 1986.

Rampersad, Arnold. The Life of Langston Hughes. vol. 2, Oxford University Press, 1988.

Shin, Chi-Yun. “Reclaiming the Corporeal: The Black Male Body and the 'Racial' Mountain

in Looking for Langston.” Paragraph, vol. 26, no. 1/2, 2003, pp. 201–212. JSTOR.

Stokes, Mason. “Strange Fruits.” Transition, no. 92, 2002, pp. 56–79. JSTOR.

“Trumpet Player.” AllPoetry, https://allpoetry.com/Trumpet-Player

Vogel, Shane. “Closing Time: Langston Hughes and the Queer Poetics of Harlem Nightlife.”

Criticism, vol. 48, no. 3, 2008, pp. 397–425. JSTOR.

Wirth, Thomas H., editor. Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance: Selections from the Work of

Richard Bruce Nugent. Duke University Press, 2002.